A I M S

Proof and Trust in the OpenAGRIS Implementation

Yves Jaques, Stefano Anibaldi, Fabrizio Celli, Imma Subirats,

Armando Stellato & Johannes Keizer

FAO of the UN, Rome, Italy

First, some background…

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Agricultural Research for Development

In 2012, G20 recognizes need to increase agricultural productivity 70-100% by mid-century.

A call to spearhead coordination and collaboration by

convening regular meetings of Agriculture Chief Scientists with the goal of

Establishing global research priorities and targets.

Developing “Global Research Collaboration Platforms” for research in key areas.

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the AGRIS platform Since 1975, a global network providing millions of bibliographic

records on agricultural research for development.

Timeline

1975 – AGRIS collection begins

1980 – AGROVOC thesaurus created

1990 – AGRIS digitized

2000 – AGRIS moves to the web

2003 – AGRIS expressed in XML

2005 – AGROVOC thesaurus moves to OWL

2010 – AGROVOC published in SKOS

2011 – AGROVOC published as LOD

2011 – AGRIS converted into RDF triples

2012 – Implementation of OpenAGRIS

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Meeting the G20’s call to action

AGRIS becomes a central portal for agricultural info.

Collaborate closely with major agricultural universities and research centers to connect, distribute and reduce duplication.

Create the world’s first comprehensive agricultural knowledge base in RDF:

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PubAg, a.k.a OpenAGRIS Leveraging relationships

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Authors

Institutions

Subjects

Other Thesauri

Dimensions & Indicators

Statistical Data AGRIS

Record

Journals

AGROVOC Thesaurus

Other records

GIS

Implementation challenges

A system that links many data sources.

A system that is transparent.

A system that allows you to drill down through the layers of information to get at source data.

A system that not only humans can interpret, but also machines!

This means lots and lots of metadata…

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Proof and Trust is a Rummy Thing

As we know, there are known knowns;

there are things we know we know.

We also know there are known unknowns;

that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.

But there are also unknown unknowns –

the ones we don't know we don't know.

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What are Proof and Trust?

Proof: Socrates is a man…no!

Proof is different from reasoning.

The set of statements used to infer a conclusion and

The statements supporting those statements.

Trust:

I have reasons to believe your linked, interpretable statements are true.

These layers are more or less inseparable.

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Proof and Trust for Machines

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Reasoning, Proof and Trust

A lot of linked statements required

Link to things, not just strings

Common problems

Conflicting statements,

Multiple authority,

Unknown quality,

Context

Can imply a heavy computing load

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Using the semantic web to draw proven conclusions

And the Questions Multiply…

Where from?

Who else trusts it?

How do you prove the authenticity?

What are the policies?

How secure is it?

How dependable?

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History of an AGRIS Resource

Author(s)

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Publisher

AGRIS Center(s)

AGRIS

article created

citation created record ingested

and validated

indexed and

disseminated

Agris AP XML <ags:resource ags:ARN="PL2009000495">

<dc:title xml:lang="en">Length-frequency compositions and weight-length relations for bigeye tuna…</dc:title> <dc:creator> <ags:creatorPersonal>Zhu, G.</ags:creatorPersonal>

</dc:creator>

<ags:citation>

<ags:citationTitle xml:lang="En">Acta Ichthyologica et Piscatoria (Poland)</ags:citationTitle>

</ags:citation>

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AGRIS into RDF

Triplification

60 million triples, soon to be 80 million

The process uncovered weak points in our system

Strings to things…

More links needed

Keywords and Journals to URIs

Journals disambiguated and published as RDF

Alignments across thesauri

Finally, VoID to describe the whole dataset

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RDF AGRIS <j.0:Article rdf:about="http://agris.fao.org/aos/records/PL2009000495"> <j.3:creator> <foaf:Person> <foaf:name>Zhou, Y.</foaf:name> </foaf:Person> </j.3:creator> <j.3:subject rdf:resource="http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_44809"/> <j.3:title xml:lang="en">Length-frequency compositions and weight-length relations for bigeye tuna…</j.3:title> <j.3:isPartOf rdf:resource="http://aims.fao.org/serials/j_1294915133547"/>

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Strings to things

Before: <ags:subjectThesaurus scheme="ags:AGROVOC" xml:lang="en">THUNNUS</ags:subjectThesaurus> <ags:subjectThesaurus scheme="ags:AGROVOC" xml:lang="en">TUNA</ags:subjectThesaurus>

After: <j.3:isPartOf rdf:resource="http://aims.fao.org/serials/j_1294915133547"/>

<j.3:subject rdf:resource="http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_8003"/> <j.3:subject rdf:resource="http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_980"/>

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Next steps Keep on triplifying

The more data, the more we can potentially infer

Bolstering proof and trust

Disambiguate authors and institutions

Focus on “reference metadata”

Methodological metadata - encode the entire “supply chain” of the record

Quality metadata – accuracy, completeness, etc.

Alignments across more concept schemes

VoID to describe the whole dataset

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Questions?

http://agris.fao.org

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