TS4NFDI support for semantic metadata

2nd NFDI Metadata Workshop

Jakob Voß

2025-06-25

Outline

  • Semantic Metadata and Terminologies
  • TS4NFDI and its Services

And now for something completely different…

Semantic Metadata?

  • All meaningful metadata is semantic!
  • Semantic does not imply interoperability
  • Shared semantics allow for interoperability

It’s all about identifiers!

  • 64 61 74 65 \(\Rightarrow\) “date” in ASCII/Unicode
  • date \(\Rightarrow\) ? in ?
  • date \(\Rightarrow\) http://purl.org/dc/terms/date in DC
  • http://purl.org/dc/terms/date \(\Rightarrow\) “A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource” in DC
  • data/identifier \(\Rightarrow\) semantics in format/schema/terminology

Terminologies give context to identifiers

  • Terminology (Dublin Core Elements, schema.org…)
  • Names (“Date”, “Datum”…)
  • Description (“A point or period of time…”)
  • Related entities (created, dateSubmitted…)
  • Rules (ISO 8601-1 date/time value, created < submitted, …)
  • Mappings (dc:created = schema:dateCreated…)

Terminology Services 4 NFDI (TS4NFDI)

  • BASE4NFDI project, integration phase 2025 & 2026
  • Joint effort of ZB Med, InfAI, TIB, RPTU, VZG
  • “provision, curation, development, harmonization and mapping of terminologies”
  • Standardise and harmonise terminology management within the NFDI

Working Packages

  1. TS4NFDI Service Portal https://terminology.services.base4nfdi.de/
  2. Mapping Service https://coli-conc.gbv.de/cocoda/ts4nfdi/
  3. Terminology Curation
  4. API Gateway https://ts4nfdi.github.io/api-gateway
  5. Terminology Service Suite https://github.com/ts4nfdi/terminology-service-suite
  6. Community engagement, communication, and training

API Gateway

  • Meta search for terminology services
    (OLS, OntoPortal, Skosmos, JSKOS, GND…)
  • Server-side integration: one API to query them all
  • Create and publish collections/lists of terminologies

Mapping Service

  • Create and review mappings with a nice UI
  • Create, edit, annotate mappings via API

Terminology Service Suite

  • React library to interact with terminologies
  • Search, Infobox, Tree-view…
  • Common data model to be used with API Gateway

Please contact us!

  • Have a look and try out!
  • Incubators: Bring you use cases!