rdf vocab

Working more on the schema. Here’s my current description:

“DOCS provides a complete vocabulary for bibliographic metadata for
scholarly citations, and a superset of legacy formats such as RIS,
Refer and BibTeX. Primary classes include Reference, Agent, Event,
and Collection to model citation sources, as well as Note,
ReferenceCollection, and ReferenceLibrary to model a user’s
organization of and commentary on that source data. In addition, DOCS
includes a full list of properties to describe resources and the
relations between them. Finally, DOCS includes mappings to other
vocabularies such as FRBR, Dublin Core, and FOAF.”

This gets us back to names. Options I can think of:

1. Description of Citation Sources (DOCS)
2. Scholarly Citation Ontology (SCO)
3. Scholarbly Bibliographic Ontology (SBO)

etc., etc.

Any good ideas? The name has to be good, and to yield a good acronym
that can be used as a namespace prefix.

Bruce

Hi Bruce,

I agree that a good name that people can remember (and pronounce)
easily is kinda critical.

This gets us back to names. Options I can think of:
1. Description of Citation Sources (DOCS)

To me, DOCS sounds like something that’s associated with
documentation, or a bit like DocBook. I think this is very
misleading.

I’d find it helpful if the name would include ‘cite’ or ‘bib’ in its
name, or alternatively, maybe ‘ref’ or ‘rel’.

  1. Scholarly Citation Ontology (SCO)
  2. Scholarbly Bibliographic Ontology (SBO)

I feel that it would be good if the name can be pronounced like a
word. This is possible with DOCS, but not with SCO or SBO.

I wouldn’t have a problem if the name is not an exact acronym of the
longer name.

Any good ideas? The name has to be good, and to yield a good
acronym that can be used as a namespace prefix.

Not that I have any better name suggestions, but how about:

SciBib - A Bibliographic Ontology for the Sciences

or maybe simply:

CITE - A Scholarly Citation Ontology

or what about just REF?

Well, just some ideas…

Matthias

Not that I have any better name suggestions, but how about:

SciBib - A Bibliographic Ontology for the Sciences

Too narrow. It leaves out the humanities and law.

or maybe simply:

CITE - A Scholarly Citation Ontology

That might be nice. There might be a “google” problem though.

Bruce

Definitely want to avoid that, trust me as a regular user of R.

How about xbiblio-ont to go with xbiblio-csl? Or should we avoid
dashes?

BibOnt OntBib CiteOnt

hmmm, I see that xbiblio once did use CiteOnt:

http://www.google.com/search?
hl=en&lr=&client=safari&rls=en&q=citeont&btnG=Search

–J

Yeah. And I also think I’d like to avoid techy terms. My model was
stuff like FOAF (Friend-of-a-Friend) and DOAP
(Description-of-a-Project).

BTW, see attached diagram.

Bruce

How about xbiblio-ont to go with xbiblio-csl? Or should we avoid
dashes?

Yeah. And I also think I’d like to avoid techy terms. My model was
stuff like FOAF (Friend-of-a-Friend) and DOAP
(Description-of-a-Project).

Nice. A worthy goal.

Description of Scholarly Sources DOSS

Description-of-Scholarly-Articles-and-other-Sources DOSAS

BTW, see attached diagram.

Mmmmm, pretty :slight_smile: What did you do that with?

–J

Description of Scholarly Sources DOSS

Description-of-Scholarly-Articles-and-other-Sources DOSAS

The first sounds a little better, though has the unfortunate
characteristic that it sounds like DOS :slight_smile:

Still, I’d be willing to consider that if others like it.

BTW, see attached diagram.

Mmmmm, pretty :slight_smile: What did you do that with?

OmniGraffle. Great app.

Bruce

Yeah, too true. ALthough that was so long ago, will anyone even
remember? :wink:

Language-for-Describing-scholarly-sources LDSS (sounds like a Church!)

Scholarly Citation Description Language SCDL (SSDL is taken by a SOAP
Security language)

Scholarly RDF (scholarly resource description format :wink:

Hmmm, we need more vowels. How about Unlimited or Useful to get us a
U? Or Extensible/Exact/Exciting to get us an E?

So we’re

Describing |

Scholarly | Academic

References | Sources | Publications (?) | Communications (?) |
Bibliographic (items)

and the content is

Metadata | (an) Ontology | (a) Format | (a) Language

and the good ol’ Bib something.

Metadata-for-Academic-References - MAR

Description of Academic Sources - DAS

Description of Academic References - DAR

Academic Reference Description Language - ARDL (ah-dul)

or the quite descriptive BibRDF … I like that and it’s quite
googlable, there are three unrelated google results.

We can tell people that it stand for ‘Bibliographic Resource
Description Format’ or Bibliography Reference Description Format.
(which is nice because people do ask each other ‘what format is that
reference in, BibTeX or Endnote’?

Ok, I’m clearly procrastinating, but I like BibRDF.

–J

I do like “BibRDF” as well. It can be pronounced rather easily and
includes a phrase that is familiar to scholarly users (“Bib”). Plus,
as James mentions, it’s currently not overloaded on Google
(which I
agree is very important).

I wouldn’t go for any abbreviation that sounds like a mere acronym
(such as “SCDL” or “ARDL”) with no obvious indication to what it is
actually for.

Matthias

I do like “BibRDF” as well. It can be pronounced rather easily and
includes a phrase that is familiar to scholarly users (“Bib”). Plus,
as James mentions, it’s currently not overloaded on Google
(which I agree is very important).

True.

I wouldn’t go for any abbreviation that sounds like a mere acronym
(such as “SCDL” or “ARDL”) with no obvious indication to what it is
actually for.

OK, but what about namespace prefix? This …

<bibrdf:title>Title</bibrdf:title>
<bibrdf:date>2000</bibrdf:date>

… would be awkward, wouldn’t it? Or no?

Bruce

^^^^^
Hi Bruce, I don’t hope this is the time you need to get up every
day! ;)On 12-Oct-06 at 05:36 -0400 Bruce D’Arcus wrote:

On Oct 12, 2006, at 5:29 AM, Matthias Steffens wrote:

I do like “BibRDF” as well. It can be pronounced rather easily
and includes a phrase that is familiar to scholarly users
(“Bib”). Plus, as James mentions, it’s currently not overloaded
on Google (which I agree is very important).
True.
I wouldn’t go for any abbreviation that sounds like a mere
acronym (such as “SCDL” or “ARDL”) with no obvious indication to
what it is actually for.
OK, but what about namespace prefix? This …
bibrdf:titleTitle</bibrdf:title>
bibrdf:date2000</bibrdf:date>
… would be awkward, wouldn’t it? Or no?

Well, yes, that may be a bit cumbersome. However, I think that every
prefix greater than 3 characters isn’t pretty and a bit tiring.

I think that the advantages of a catchy name outweigh the prefix
issues but that may be only my own preference. More opinions would
surely be helpful.

Matthias

What about using “bib” as the namespace prefix?

Simon

Yes, I’d like that - at least if it has not been used yet for
something else and if it’s ok for other people that the actual vocab
name “BibRDF” is slightly different from the used XML prefix.

Matthias

No, I have a cold whose side-effect is early morning insomnia!

Bruce

You mean like this?

http://www.onesmallchild-accessories.com/bib-beaded.jpg

:wink:

Another simple alternative is “bd”, which is only coincidentally my
initials, but more importantly could stand for “Bibliographic
Description”. I guess it’s hard to avoid a choice between a
descriptive acronym (DOAP, FOAF, DC) or shortened version of
bibliographic or citation. I still lean toward the former, but am
still open to the other.

I dunno, maybe its time to whip out Dan’s Albanian dictionary!

Bruce

ROAR: Representation Of Academic References (roar is a bit over the
top, really).

OAR: Ontology for Academic References (oar has very bad google
interference)

DOAR: Description of Academic References (Surprisingly high google
count, word in spanish?, also sounds too much like dour, not a great
connotation.)

BOAR: Bruce’s Ontology for Academic Resources (ok, I’m joking now).

Actually I really like calling it BibRDF but using just ‘bib’ as the
namespace descriptor, both are really clear. Would it piss off dc et
al (since they are also bib related?)?

A google search for bib namespace or bib:author isn’t too
discouraging, it seems that is has been used quite often as an
example with a fake bib URL. (actually does anyone know how to make
Google search for the exact phrase “bib:author”, it strips out the :
bib+:author doesn’t work.) I worry though that it would clash with
many existing partial, local namespaces.

Code search doesn’t have it showing up much though (only 5 results
for bib:author):

http://www.google.com/codesearch?q=bib%3Aauthor&btnG=Search+Code

BibD (Bibliographic Description) was a good suggestion with bibd as
the namespace too. Unfortunately BIBD stands for “Balanced Incomplete
Block Design” and something in Mathematica, so has low google
uniqueness. And it implies some type of Bibliographic Daemon. bibd
doesn’t seem to have been used in namespaces though.

But maybe BibD and bd as the namespace? I like that BD matches your
initials, since this is your baby :slight_smile:

Or BDF for Bibliographic Description Format or Bruce D’arcus’s
Format ;), of course BDF has lots of google interference.

–J

or Vocabulary for Bibliographies: vbib