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Making Sense of Linked Data: A Semantic Exploration Approach

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Mastering Data-Intensive Collaboration and Decision Making

Part of the book series: Studies in Big Data ((SBD,volume 5))

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Abstract

There are growing arguments that Linked Data technologies can be utilised to enable user-oriented exploratory search systems for the future Internet. Recently, search over Linked Data has been studied in different domains and contexts. However, there is still limited insight into how conventional semantic browsers over Linked Data can be extended to empower exploratory search, which is open-ended, multi-faceted and iterative in nature. Empirical user studies in representative domains can identify problems and elicit requirements for innovative functionality to assist user exploration. This chapter presents such an approach—a user study with a unifocal semantic data browser over several datasets linked via domain ontologies is used to inform what intelligent features are needed in order to assist exploratory search through Linked Data. We report main problems experienced by users while conducting exploratory search tasks, based on which requirements for algorithmic support to address the observed issues are elicited. A semantic signposting approach for extending a semantic data browser is proposed as a way to address the derived requirements.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Using an analogy with Christopher Columbus’ ship ‘La Pinta’; in our case, Pinta is a browser shell providing a means to explore through a vast amount of data.

  2. 2.

    http://dbpedia.org/About

  3. 3.

    http://sourceforge.net/p/pinta/code/38/tree/

  4. 4.

    http://dbtune.org/

  5. 5.

    http://musicontology.com/

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the participants in the study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK

    Dhavalkumar Thakker, Vania Dimitrova, Lydia Lau, Fan Yang-Turner & Dimoklis Despotakis

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  1. Dhavalkumar Thakker
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  2. Vania Dimitrova
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  3. Lydia Lau
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  4. Fan Yang-Turner
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  5. Dimoklis Despotakis
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Correspondence to Dhavalkumar Thakker .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Patras and Computer Technology Institute & Press "Diophantus", Rio Patras, Greece

    Nikos Karacapilidis

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Thakker, D., Dimitrova, V., Lau, L., Yang-Turner, F., Despotakis, D. (2014). Making Sense of Linked Data: A Semantic Exploration Approach. In: Karacapilidis, N. (eds) Mastering Data-Intensive Collaboration and Decision Making. Studies in Big Data, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02612-1_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02612-1_4

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-02612-1

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