LOD4HSS Initiative

For the semantisation and reuse of research data in HSS

 

[ Please note that this website is currently undergoing a major redesign ]

 

The LOD4HSS initiative, promoted by the Laboratoire de Recherche Historique Rhône-Alpes (LARHRA, Lyon) and the Digital Humanities Chair at the University of Bern, aims to establish a sustainable and vibrant community that manages an ecosystem of projects and infrastructures for research in the Humanities and Social Sciences based on semantic web technologies. Open to all interested institutions and projects, the initiative dates back to 2017, with the creation of the OntoME web platform (ontome.net) and the launch of the Semantic Data for the Humanities and Social Sciences (SDHSS) project (sdhss.org).

The LOD4HSS initiative is built around four main pillars:

  1. A common ontology ecosystem. At the heart of this endeavour is the SDHSS project. This project provides a methodology for ontology engineering based on OntoClean and DOLCE, as well as a common semantic backbone based on CIDOC CRM, a core ontology for describing events, actors, sources and other relevant information in the HSS domain. The SDHSS project meets the basic needs of most projects and provides a set of best practices for creating community-driven extensions for research subdomains. This ensures semantic consistency and interoperability across different datasets, enabling the construction of a research-driven, distributed giant knowledge graph.
  2. Shared authority files. With a focus on Wikidata and IdRef, they enable the addition of entities not present in other repositories, as well as providing the information needed to identify them. They facilitate easy connection to other authority files (GND, BNF, etc.) if the entities are referenced there. Finally, this approach makes it possible to reuse apps and widgets that align existing data with Wikidata.
  3. Adoption of existing virtual research environments This helps to enlarge and strengthen HSS research communities within the Semantic Web, making platforms more sustainable. We notably promote the use of the WissKI platform, an open-source infrastructure developed for semantic data management and publication, fully compatible with the LOD and Semantic Web standards and supported by the Germanisches Nationalmuseum.
  4. Adopt and develop Open-Source Tools. The LOD4HSS initiative also promotes the reuse and development of innovative, specialised open-source tools such as the Local Graph Editor (LOGRE), which is based on a SHACL serialisation of application profiles managed in OntoME. These tools support the collaborative modelling and editing of knowledge graphs, enabling standardised, transparent, and reproducible research workflows.

 

By using SDHSS, a common and extensible conceptualisation, by enabling connections to major authority files such as Wikidata, IdRef, GND, BNF, etc., and by encouraging the reuse of open datasets from other projects, the LOD4HSS distributed knowledge graph ensures that data produced within each project is not only open and interoperable but also part of a larger, interconnected scholarly web.

The LOD4HSS initiative thus provides a model for how the Humanities and Social Sciences can fully harness the power of semantic technologies.