From the webpage:
This project will develop an approach and mechanism to address the construction and propagation of linked data in the context of research and academic endeavour. The proposed work will build experiments in previous projects (Claddier, StoreLink) to develop a peer-to-peer protocol to underpin the construction of a web of linked data. This set of semantically annotated links between data resources forms a graph of citation and provenance and the project will build value added services to exploit these features.
I ran across this in the following description of a presentation at a library conference:
Inter-repository Linking of Research Objects with Webtracks
This session being presented by Shirley Ying Crompton. Shirley describing how the research process leads to research data and outputs being stored in different places with no links between them. So decided to use RDF/linked data to added structured citation links between research objects (and people – e.g. creators).
However, different objects created in different systems – so how to make sure objects are linked as they are created? Looked at existing protocols for enabling links to be created:
- Trackbacks – use for blogs/comments
- Semantic pingback – an RPC protocol to form semantic links between objects
- Salmons – RSS protocol
- …
Decided to take ‘webtracks’ approch – this is an inter-repository communication protocol. The Webtracks InteRCom protocol – allows formation of links between objects in two different repositories. InteRCom is two stage protocol – first stage is ‘harvest’ to get links, then second stage ‘request’ a link between two objects.
InteRCom implementation has been done in Java, available as open source – available for download from http://sourceforge.net/projects/webtracks/.
Shirley says: Webtracks facilitates propagation of citation links to provide a linked web of data – uses emerging linked data environment and support linking between diverse types o digital research objects. There are no constraints on link semantics or metadata. Importantly (for the project) is that it does not rely on centralised service – it is peer-to-peer. [Repository Services]
The key insight is “…different objects created in different systems….” (emphasis added)
That condition is, has been and will be true, no matter what solution you decide upon.