Semantic publishing on the Web, or semantic web publishing, refers to publishing information on the web as documents accompanied by

semantic markup Semantic HTML is the use of HTML markup to reinforce the semantics, or meaning, of the information in web pages and web applications rather than merely to define its presentation or look. Semantic HTML is processed by traditional web browsers a ...

. Semantic publication provides a way for computers to understand the structure and even the meaning of the published information, making information search and

data integration Data integration involves combining data residing in different sources and providing users with a unified view of them. This process becomes significant in a variety of situations, which include both commercial (such as when two similar companies ...

more efficient. Although semantic publishing is not specific to the Web, it has been driven by the rising of the semantic web. In the semantic web, published information is accompanied by metadata describing the information, providing a "semantic" context. Although semantic publishing has the potential to change the face of

web publishing A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wikipe ...

, acceptance depends on the emergence of compelling applications. Web sites can already be built with all contents in both

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaSc ...

format and semantic format. RSS1.0, uses RDF (a semantic web standard) format, although it has become less popular than RSS2.0 and

Atom Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and a number of neutrons. Only the most common variety of hydrogen has no neutrons. Every solid, liquid, gas, ...

. Web2express.org applies RDF to various data feeds. Anyone can use their service: to create and provide RDF data resources and datafeeds for products, news, events, jobs and studies. Semantic publishing has the potential to revolutionize

scientific publishing : ''For a broader class of literature, see Academic publishing.'' Scientific literature comprises scholarly publications that report original empirical and theoretical work in the natural and social sciences. Within an academic field, scient ...

. Tim Berners-Lee predicted in 2001 that the semantic web "will likely profoundly change the very nature of how

scientific knowledge Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

is produced and shared, in ways that we can now barely imagine". Revisiting the semantic web in 2006, he and his colleagues believed the semantic web "could bring about a revolution in how, for example, scientific content is managed throughout its life cycle". Researchers could directly self-publish their experiment data in "semantic" format on the web. Semantic search engines could then make these data widely available. The

W3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...

interest group in healthcare and life sciences is exploring this idea.

Two approaches

*Publish information as data objects using semantic web languages like RDF and

OWL Owls are birds from the order Strigiformes (), which includes over 200 species of mostly solitary and nocturnal birds of prey typified by an upright stance, a large, broad head, binocular vision, binaural hearing, sharp talons, and feathers a ...

Ontology In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality. Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exi ...

is usually developed for a specific information domain, which can formally represent the data in its domain. Semantic publishing of more general information like product information, news, and job openings uses so-called shallow ontology. The SWEO Linking Open Data Project maintains a list of data sources that follow this approach as well as a list of Semantic Publishing Tools. *Express structured data in

markup languages Markup language refers to a text-encoding system consisting of a set of symbols inserted in a text document to control its structure, formatting, or the relationship between its parts. Markup is often used to control the display of the document ...

with RDFa, embed or publish information using

JSON-LD JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) is a method of encoding linked data using JSON. One goal for JSON-LD was to require as little effort as possible from developers to transform their existing JSON to JSON-LD. JSON-LD allows data ...

Turtle Turtles are an order of reptiles known as Testudines, characterized by a special shell developed mainly from their ribs. Modern turtles are divided into two major groups, the Pleurodira (side necked turtles) and Cryptodira (hidden necked t ...

, TriG syntaxes.

Examples

Examples of free or open source tools and services

Ambra Project
is open source software designed to publish open access journals with RDF. Used by

PLoS PLOS (for Public Library of Science; PLoS until 2012 ) is a nonprofit publisher of open-access journals in science, technology, and medicine and other scientific literature, under an open-content license. It was founded in 2000 and laun ...

. *

Semantic MediaWiki Semantic MediaWiki (SMW) is an extension to MediaWiki that allows for annotating semantic data within wiki pages, thus turning a wiki that incorporates the extension into a semantic wiki. Data that has been encoded can be used in semantic search ...

: An extension to the wiki application

MediaWiki MediaWiki is a free and open-source wiki software. It is used on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia websites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; these sites define a large part of the requirement set for MediaWi ...

that allows users to semantically annotate data on the wiki, and then publish it in formats such as RDF XML.
D2R Server
Tool for publishing relational databases on the Semantic Web as

Linked Data In computing, linked data (often capitalized as Linked Data) is structured data which is interlinked with other data so it becomes more useful through semantic queries. It builds upon standard Web technologies such as HTTP, RDF and URIs, but ...

and

SPARQL SPARQL (pronounced " sparkle" , a recursive acronym for SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language) is an RDF query language—that is, a semantic query language for databases—able to retrieve and manipulate data stored in Resource Description ...

endpoints. * Utopia Documents Interactive documents
dokieli
is a client-side editor for

decentralized Decentralization or decentralisation is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those regarding planning and decision making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group. Conce ...

article publishing in HTML+RDFa (and embeddable TriG, Turtle, JSON-LD), annotations and social interactions. It implements W3C specifications: Web Annotation, Linked Data Notifications
Activity Streams 2.0

ActivityPub ActivityPub is an open, decentralized social networking protocol based on Pump.io's ActivityPump protocol. It provides a client/server API for creating, updating, and deleting content, as well as a federated server-to-server API for delive ...

. Employs

WebID WebID is a method for internet services and members to know who they are communicating with. The WebID specifications define a set oto prepare the process of standardization for identity, identification and authentication on HTTP-based networks. W ...

+ TLS and WebID+ OIDC for authentication, Web

access control list In computer security, an access-control list (ACL) is a list of permissions associated with a system resource (object). An ACL specifies which users or system processes are granted access to objects, as well as what operations are allowed on gi ...

and compliant with

Linked Data Platform Linked Data Platform (LDP) is a linked data specification defining a set of integration patterns for building RESTful HTTP services that are capable of read/write of RDF data. The Linked Data Platform allows use of RESTful HTTP to consume, create ...

. Articles and annotations can be individually assigned with a

Creative Commons license A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyric ...

as well as a

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...

. It
source code
uses the Apache License, Version 2.0.

Two approaches

Examples

Examples of free or open source tools and services

See also

References

Further reading