Bibliographic Ontology Specification

Specification Document - 17 July 2007

Latest version:
http://purl.org/ontology/bibo/
Last update:
$Date: 2007/07/17 010:32:43 $
Revision:
Revision: 0.00 - Under construction - See the Wiki for more information
Editor:
Frédérick Giasson - Zitgist
Authors:
Bruce D'Arcus
Frédérick Giasson - Zitgist
 

Copyright © 2006-2007 by Zitgist LLC.

 

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. This copyright applies to the Bibliographic Ontology Specification and accompanying documentation and does not apply to Bibliographic Ontology data formats, ontology terms, or technology. Regarding underlying technology, Bibliographic Ontology relies heavily on W3C's RDF technology, an open Web standard that can be freely used by anyone.

This visual layout and structure of the specification was adapted from the FOAF Vocabulary Specification by Dan Brickley and Libby Miller and the SIOC Ontolofy Specification by Uldis Bojar and John G. Breslin. Yves Raimond created a new and enhanced document generator called OntoSpec used to generate this document.
Google Groups Bibliographic Ontology Specification Group
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Abstract

The Bibliographic Ontology Specification provides main concepts and properties for describing citations and bibliographic references (i.e. quotes, books, articles, etc) on the Semantic Web.

 

Status of This Document

NOTE: This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document.

This specification is an evolving document. This document is generated by a machine-readable Bibliographic Ontology expressed in RDF/XML with a specification template.

Authors welcome suggestions on the Bibliographic Ontology and this document. This document may be updated or added to based on implementation experience, but no commitment is made by the authors regarding future updates.

 

Table of Contents

 

Introduction


 

Terminology and Notation

The keywords "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC 2119].

Namespace URIs of the general form "http://www.example.com/." represents some application-dependent or context-dependent URI as defined in RFC 2396 [RFC 2396].

The XML Namespace URI that MUST be used by implementations of this specification is:

 

Bibliographic Ontology At A Glance

An alphabetical index of Bibliographic Ontology terms, by class (categories or types), by property and by individuals. All the terms are hyperlinked to their detailed description for quick reference.

Classes: | Article | Book | Collection | Contribution | ContributionRole | CourtReporter | Document | DocumentStatus | InternetSite | Journal | Law | LegalCase | Legislation | Magazine | Manual | Manuscript | Note | Part | Patent | Periodical | Report | Role | Series | Thesis | Transcript | WebPage |

Properties: | asin | chapter | coden | contribution | contributor | doi | editionName | editionNumber | familyName | givenName | identifier | isbn | isbn-10 | isbn-13 | issn | issue | lccn | locator | number | page | pageEnd | pageNumber | pageStart | pages | physicalLocation | physicalLocationDescription | position | prefixName | presentedAt | presentedTo | role | shortTitle | sici | status | suffixName | translationOf | url | volume |

Individuals: | roles/author | roles/contributor | roles/distributor | roles/editor | roles/interviewer | roles/interviwee | roles/owner | roles/producer | roles/publisher | roles/recipient | roles/translator | status/draft | status/forthcoming | status/published | types/booklet | types/brief | types/decision | types/dissertation | types/interview | types/masterThesis | types/phdThesis | types/proceeding | types/technicalReport |

 

 

External Ontologies used by the Bibliographic Ontology At A Glance

An alphabetical index of external ontologies terms, by class (categories or types), by property and by individuals, used by the Bibliographic Ontology. All the terms are hyperlinked to their detailed description for quick reference.

 

Classes:

Properties:

Individuals:

 

 

Bibliographic Ontology Overview

The Bibliographic Ontology definitions presented here are written using a computer language (RDF/OWL) that makes it easy for software to process some basic facts about the terms in the Bibliographic Ontology, and consequently about the things described in Bibliographic Ontology documents. A Bibliographic Ontology document, unlike a traditional Web page, can be combined with other Bibliographic Ontology documents to create a unified database of information.

 

BIBLIO Basics

Document Types

Collection Types

Status


Contributions

Locators

Identifiers

Naming









Bibliographic Ontology Classes Hierarchy

There are the schemes of the hierarchy of the Bibliographic Ontology classes. These schemes show the interaction between the Bibliographic Ontology classes and other ontologies classes.


Schemes are available on the Bibliographic Ontology Wiki








RDF Document Examples

The list of RDF serializations (XML and N3) Examples can be found on the Bibliographic Ontology Wiki




Examples of SPARQL queries against these RDF graphs

The list of SPARQL queries and their description can be found on the Bibliographic Ontology Wiki



Background

The Bibliographic Ontology is an effort of ZitGist LLC. Bruce D'Arcus and Zotero to express citations and bibliographic relations using RDF and to query that same information using the SPARQL query language for RDF.

The specific contents of the Bibliographic Ontology are detailed in the Bibliographic Ontology namespace document.

 

The Bibliographic Ontology Description

This specification serves as the Bibliographic Ontology "namespace document". As such it describes the Bibliographic Ontology and the terms (RDF classes and properties) that constitute it, so that Semantic Web applications can use those terms in a variety of RDF-compatible document formats and applications.

This document presents the Bibliographic Ontology as a Semantic Web vocabulary or Ontology. The Bibliographic Ontology is straightforward, pragmatic and designed to allow simultaneous deployment and extension, and is therefore intended for widescale use.

 

Evolution and Extension of the Bibliographic Ontology

The Bibliographic Ontology is identified by the namespace URI 'http://purl.org/ontology/biblio/'.

Revisions and extensions of Bibliographic Ontology are conducted through edits to the namespace document, which by convention is published in the Web at the namespace URI.

The properties and types defined here provide some basic concepts for use in Bibliographic Ontology descriptions. Other vocabularies (e.g. the Dublin Core metadata elements for simple bibliographic description, FOAF, etc.) can also be mixed in with the Bibliographic Ontology terms, as can local extensions. The Bibliographic Ontology is designed to be extended, and modules may be added at a later date.

 

Bibliographic Ontology Modules

Bibliographic Ontology modules may be used to extend the ontology and avoid making the base ontology too complex.

 

The Bibliographic Ontology and Standards

It is important to understand that the Bibliographic Ontology as specified in this document is not a standard in the sense of ISO Standardisation, or that associated with W3C Process.

The Bibliographic Ontology depends heavily on W3C's standards work, specifically on XML, XML Namespaces, RDF, and OWL. All the Bibliographic Ontology documents must be well-formed RDF/XML documents.

This specification contributes an ontology, the "Bibliographic Ontology ", to the Semantic Web, specifying it using W3C's Resource Description Framework (RDF). As such, the Bibliographic Ontology adopts by reference both a syntax (using XML), a data model (RDF graphs) and a mathematically grounded definition for the rules that underpin the RDF design.

 

The Bibliographic Ontology and RDF

Why does the Bibliographic Ontology use RDF?

The Bibliographic Ontology is an application of the Resource Description Framework (RDF) because the subject area we're describing – citations and bibliographic references-- has so many competing requirements that a standalone format would not capture them or would lead to trying to describe these requirements in a number of incompatible formats. By using RDF, the Bibliographic Ontology gains a powerful extensibility mechanism, allowing Bibliographic-Ontology-based descriptions to be mixed with claims made in any other RDF vocabulary.

The Bibliographic Ontology as an ontology cannot incorporate everything we might want to talk about that is related to citations and bibliographic references. Instead of covering all topics within the Bibliographic Ongoloty itself, we describe the basic topics and build into a larger framework - RDF - that allows us to take advantage of work elsewhere on more specific description vocabularies.

RDF provides the Bibliographic Ontology with a way to mix together different descriptive vocabularies in a consistent way. Vocabularies can be created by different communities and groups as appropriate and mixed together as required, without needing any centralized agreement on how terms from different vocabularies can be written down in XML or N3.

Check the Ontology namespaces referenced section to find some ontologies that ca be use in conjonction with the Bibliographic Ontology.

There are mechanisms for saying which RDF properties are connected to which classes, and how different classes are related to each other, using RDF Syntax and OWL. These can be quite general (all RDF properties by default come from an rdf:Resource for example) or very specific and precise (for example by using OWL constructs). This is another form of self-documentation, which allows you to connect different vocabularies together as you please.

In summary then, RDF is self-documenting in ways which enable the creation and combination of vocabularies in a devolved manner. This is particularly important for an ontology which describes communities, since online communities connect to many other domains of interest, which it would be impossible (as well as suboptimal) for a single group to describe adequately in non-geological time.

RDF is usually written using the XML or N3 syntaxes. If you want to process the data, you will need to use one of the many RDF toolkits available, such as Jena (Java) or Redland (C).

More information about RDF can be found in the RDF Primer.

 

The Bibliographic Ontology cross-reference: Classes, Properties and Individuals

The Bibliographic Ontology introduces the following classes, properties and individuals. See the Bibliographic Ontology namespace document in RDF/XML for more detail.

Classes, Properties and Individuals (full detail)

 

Class: bibo:Article - stable

Article - An article.

[back to top]


sub-class-of:Document

Class: bibo:Book - stable

Book - A Book.

[back to top]


sub-class-of:Document

Class: bibo:Collection - stable

Collection - A collection of Documents

[back to top]


Class: bibo:Contribution - stable

Contribution - A contribution by an agent to the intellectual content or realization of a document.

[back to top]


in-range-of:contribution
in-domain-of:contributor position role

Class: bibo:ContributionRole - stable

ContributionRole - The role played by a person or an organization in the creation of a document

[back to top]


in-range-of:role

Class: bibo:CourtReporter - stable

CourtReporter - A collection of legal cases.

[back to top]


sub-class-of:Periodical

Class: bibo:DocumentStatus - stable

DocumentStatus - The status of a document.

[back to top]


in-range-of:status

Class: bibo:InternetSite - stable

InternetSite - A collection of Web Pages.

[back to top]


sub-class-of:Collection

Class: bibo:Journal - stable

Journal - A collection of journal Articles.

[back to top]


sub-class-of:Periodical

Class: bibo:Law - stable

Law - A Law.

[back to top]


sub-class-of:Document

Class: bibo:LegalCase - stable

LegalCase - A legal case.

[back to top]


sub-class-of:Document

Class: bibo:Legislation - stable

Legislation - A Legistlation.

[back to top]


sub-class-of:Document

Class: bibo:Magazine - stable

Magazine - A collection of magazine Articles.

[back to top]


sub-class-of:Periodical

Class: bibo:Manual - stable

Manual - A Manual.

[back to top]


sub-class-of:Document

Class: bibo:Manuscript - stable

Manuscript - A manuscript.

[back to top]


sub-class-of:Document

Class: bibo:Note - stable

Note - A Note.

[back to top]


sub-class-of:Document

Class: bibo:Part - stable

Part - A part of a document

[back to top]


in-domain-of:page chapter issue volume pages pageEnd pageStart locator
sub-class-of:Document

Class: bibo:Patent - stable

Patent - A Patent.

[back to top]


sub-class-of:Document

Class: bibo:Periodical - stable

Periodical - A collection of Periodicals.

[back to top]


sub-class-of:Collection

Class: bibo:Report - stable

Report - A Report.

[back to top]


sub-class-of:Document

Class: bibo:Role - stable

Role - A role

[back to top]


Class: bibo:Series - stable

Series - A collection of Series.

[back to top]


sub-class-of:Collection

Class: bibo:Thesis - stable

Thesis - A Report.

[back to top]


sub-class-of:Document

Class: bibo:Transcript - stable

Transcript - A Transcript.

[back to top]


sub-class-of:Document

Class: bibo:WebPage - stable

WebPage - A web page.

[back to top]


in-domain-of:url
sub-class-of:Document

Property: bibo:asin - stable

asin - Amazon Standard Identification Number
Domain: Document
Range: rdfs:Literal
Sub-property-of: bibo:identifier

Property: bibo:chapter - stable

chapter - A single and specific chapter in a Part
Domain: Part
Range: rdfs:Literal
Sub-property-of: bibo:locator

Property: bibo:coden - stable

coden - An identifier of serials, still in use by libraries, but replaced by ISSN for any new work
Domain: Document
Range: rdfs:Literal
Sub-property-of: bibo:identifier

Property: bibo:contribution - stable

contribution - Link a Document to its Contributions (so to its contributors)
Domain: Document
Range: Contribution

Property: bibo:contributor - stable

contributor - A reference to the contributor that makes a contribution.
Domain: Contribution
Range: foaf:Agent

Property: bibo:doi - stable

doi - Digital Object Identifier
Domain: Document
Range: rdfs:Literal
Sub-property-of: bibo:identifier

Property: bibo:editionName - stable

editionName - The name that can be defined for a special edition of a document.
Domain: Document
Range: rdfs:Literal

Property: bibo:editionNumber - stable

editionNumber - The number representing the edition of a document. It can be loosely be used as the version identifier of a document.
Domain: Document
Range: rdfs:Literal

Property: bibo:familyName - stable

familyName - The family name
Domain: foaf:Agent
Range: rdfs:Literal

Property: bibo:givenName - stable

givenName - The given name
Domain: foaf:Agent
Range: rdfs:Literal

Property: bibo:identifier - stable

identifier - identifier
Domain: Document
Range: rdfs:Literal

Property: bibo:isbn - stable

isbn - International Standard Book Number
Domain: Document
Range: rdfs:Literal
Sub-property-of: bibo:identifier

Property: bibo:isbn-10 - stable

isbn-10 - International Standard Book Number
Domain: Document
Range: rdfs:Literal
Sub-property-of: bibo:identifier

Property: bibo:isbn-13 - stable

isbn-13 - International Standard Book Number
Domain: Document
Range: rdfs:Literal
Sub-property-of: bibo:identifier

Property: bibo:issn - stable

issn - International Standard Serial Number
Domain: Document
Range: rdfs:Literal
Sub-property-of: bibo:identifier

Property: bibo:issue - stable

issue - An issue
Domain: Part
Range: rdfs:Literal
Sub-property-of: bibo:locator

Property: bibo:lccn - stable

lccn - Library of Congress Control Number
Domain: Document
Range: rdfs:Literal
Sub-property-of: bibo:identifier

Property: bibo:locator - stable

locator - It locates a part of a document with its beloging document
Domain: Part
Range: rdfs:Literal

Property: bibo:number - stable

number - A generic item or document number.
Domain: Document
Range: rdfs:Literal

Property: bibo:page - stable

page - A single and specific page in a Part
Domain: Part
Range: rdfs:Literal
Sub-property-of: bibo:locator

Property: bibo:pageEnd - stable

pageEnd - Ending reference page
Domain: Part
Range: rdfs:Literal
Sub-property-of: bibo:locator

Property: bibo:pageNumber - stable

pageNumber - Number of pages of a document
Domain: Document
Range: rdfs:Literal

Property: bibo:pageStart - stable

pageStart - Starting reference page
Domain: Part
Range: rdfs:Literal
Sub-property-of: bibo:locator

Property: bibo:pages - stable

pages - A string of page span of a Document within a Collection. Example: 23-25, 34, 54-56
Domain: Part
Range: rdfs:Literal
Sub-property-of: bibo:locator

Property: bibo:physicalLocation - unstable

physicalLocation - Physical location of a Document
Domain: Document
Range: geo:SpatialThing
Sub-property-of: bibo:locator

Property: bibo:physicalLocationDescription - unstable

physicalLocationDescription - The description of the location of a physical document in a physical place
Domain: geo:SpatialThing
Range: rdfs:Literal

Property: bibo:position - stable

position - A position within an ordered contributor list, as scoped by a role. Should be an integer.
Domain: Contribution
Range: rdfs:Literal

Property: bibo:prefixName - stable

prefixName - The prefix of a name
Domain: foaf:Agent
Range: rdfs:Literal

Property: bibo:presentedAt - unstable

presentedAt - Relates an item to an event; for example, a paper to a conference.
Domain: Document
Range: bibo:Event
Sub-property-of: dcterms:relation

Property: bibo:presentedTo - unstable

presentedTo - Relates an item to something it is presented to
Domain: Document
Range: rdfs:Resource
Sub-property-of: dcterms:relation

Property: bibo:role - stable

role - The role an agent plays in a contribution.
Domain: Contribution
Range: ContributionRole

Property: bibo:shortTitle - stable

shortTitle -
Domain: rdfs:Resource
Range: rdfs:Literal
Sub-property-of: dcterms:title

Property: bibo:sici - stable

sici - Serial Item and Contribution Identifier
Domain: Document
Range: rdfs:Literal
Sub-property-of: bibo:identifier

Property: bibo:status - stable

status - The publication status of (typically academic) content.
Domain: Document
Range: DocumentStatus

Property: bibo:suffixName - stable

suffixName - The suffix of a name
Domain: foaf:Agent
Range: rdfs:Literal

Property: bibo:translationOf - stable

translationOf - Relates a translated item to the original.
Domain: Document
Range: Document
Sub-property-of: dcterms:versionOf

Property: bibo:url - stable

url - Universal Resource Locator
Domain: Document WebPage
Range: rdfs:Literal
Sub-property-of: bibo:identifier

Property: bibo:volume - stable

volume - A volume
Domain: Part
Range: rdfs:Literal
Sub-property-of: bibo:locator

 

External ontologies used by the Bibliographic Ontology cross-reference: Classes, Properties and Individuals

External ontologies used by the Bibliographic Ontology introduces the following classes, properties and individuals. See the Bibliographic Ontology namespace document in RDF/XML for more detail.

Classes, Properties and Individuals (full detail)


Ontology namespaces referenced:

Prefix XML Namespace Specification
dcterms http://purl.org/dc/terms/ Dublin Core Element Refinements and Encoding Schemes
event http://purl.org/NET/c4dm/event.owl# The Event ontology
foaf http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/ Friend of a Friend (FOAF) Vocabulary




References

  • "Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records - Final Report", 1998 by International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, ISBN 3-598-11382-X. (http://www.ifla.org/VII/s13/frbr/frbr.htm.)
  • [RFC 2119] S. Bradner, "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels," RFC 2119, Harvard University, March 1997. (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt.)
  • [RFC 2396] T.Berners-Lee, et al, "Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax," RFC 2396, Internet Engineering Task Force, August 1998. (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt.)

Change Log

 

  • 2007-04-14: Revision 0.00 of the Bibliographic Ontology Specification