Cerif4Datasets (C4D) – Utilising Semantics for the Discovery and Exploration of Datasets in Research

Abstract

The aim of the Cerif4Datasets (C4D) project is to use CERIF to capture the metadata of research datasets and integrate this metadata with that held on research projects and research outputs available on a central CERIF cloud. CERIF has so far concentrated on the core entities of organisations, people and publications and has some provisions for research outputs such as patents, but is not fully equipped to support datasets, especially when there is a need to make these readily discoverable. C4D therefore aims to explore the capabilities of CERIF and extend it where required to support metadata about research datasets from a variety of disciplines. C4D will build on existing standards where possible and develop a reference implementation that makes use of semantic technologies for improved discovery and navigation of key entities associated with datasets such as people, organisations and publications. In this paper we explore the issues related to suitable metadata standards, classification systems. An architecture is also proposed to afford the required discoverability and navigation layer.