Key Aspects and Approaches of Open Access, Open Data and Open Science

Overview of the key aspects and approaches to open access, open data and open science, emphasizing on sharing scientific knowledge for sustainable progress and development.

AstroWeb – A Graphical Representation of an Astronomical WFPDB Database Using a Web-Based Open Source Geographical Information System

ACM Computing Classification System (1998): H.5.2, H.2.8, J.2, H.5.3.

Персональная цифровая библиотека Libmeta как среда интеграции связанных открытых данных

Report published in the Proceedings of the National Conference on "Education and Research in the Information Society", Plovdiv, May, 2014

Policy Framework and Roadmap for Open Access, Open Research Data and Open Science

Overview of the growth of policies and a critical appraisal of the issues affecting open access, open data and open science policies. Example policies and a roadmap for open access, open research data and open science are included.

INFRAWEBS Axiom Editor – A Graphical Ontology-Driven Tool for Creating Complex Logical Expressions

The current INFRAWEBS European research project aims at developing ICT framework enabling software and service providers to generate and establish open and extensible development platforms for Web Service applications. One of the concrete project objectives is developing a full-life-cycle software toolset for creating and maintaining Semantic Web Services (SWSs) supporting specific applications based on Web Service Modelling Ontology (WSMO) framework. According to WSMO, functional and behavioural descriptions of a SWS may be represented by means of complex logical expressions (axioms). The paper describes a specialized userfriendly tool for constructing and editing such axioms – INFRAWEBS Axiom Editor. After discussing the main design principles of the Editor, its functional architecture is briefly presented. The tool is implemented in Eclipse Graphical Environment Framework and Eclipse Rich Client Platform.

Importance and Benefits of OPEN SCIENCE for Ubiquitous Sharing, Dissemination and Impact

While openness is well applied to software development and exploitation (open sources), and successfully applied to new business models (open innovation), fundamental and applied research seems to lag behind. Even after decades of advocacy, in 2011 only 50% of the public-funded research was freely available and accessible (Archambault et al., 2013). The current research workflows, stemming from a pre-internet age, result in loss of opportunity not only for the researchers themselves (cf. extensive literature on topic at Open Access citation project, http://opcit.eprints.org/), but also slows down innovation and application of research results (Houghton & Swan, 2011). Recent studies continue to suggest that lack of awareness among researchers, rather than lack of e-infrastructure and methodology, is a key reason for this loss of opportunity (Graziotin 2014). The session will focus on why Open Science is ideally suited to achieving tenure-relevant researcher impact in a “Publish or Perish” reality. Open Science encapsulates tools and approaches for each step along the research cycle: from Open Notebook Science to Open Data, Open Access, all setting up researchers for capitalising on social media in order to promote and discuss, and establish unexpected collaborations. Incorporating these new approaches into a updated personal research workflow is of strategic beneficial for young researchers, and will prepare them for expected long term funder trends towards greater openness and demand for greater return on investment (ROI) for public funds.

Supporting and Enhancing Research on Cultural Heritage in France: the PATRIMA Project

In this paper, we first overview the French project on heritage called PATRIMA, launched in 2011 as one of the Projets d'investissement pour l'avenir, a French funding program meant to last for the next ten years. The overall purpose of the PATRIMA project is to promote and fund research on various aspects of heritage presentation and preservation. Such research being interdisciplinary, research groups in history, physics, chemistry, biology and computer science are involved in this project. The PATRIMA consortium involves research groups from universities and from the main museums or cultural heritage institutions in Paris and surroundings. More specifically, the main members of the consortium are the two universities of Cergy-Pontoise and Versailles Saint-Quentin and the following famous museums or cultural institutions: Musée du Louvre, Château de Versailles, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Musée du Quai Branly, Musée Rodin. In the second part of the paper, we focus on two projects funded by PATRIMA named EDOP and Parcours and dealing with data integration. The goal of the EDOP project is to provide users with a data space for the integration of heterogeneous information about heritage; Linked Open Data are considered for an effective access to the corresponding data sources. On the other hand, the Parcours project aims at building an ontology on the terminology about the techniques dealing with restoration and/or conservation. Such an ontology is meant to provide a common terminology to researchers using different databases and different vocabularies.

INFRAWEBS BPEL-Based Editor for Creating the Semantic Web Services Description

INFRAWEBS project [INFRAWEBS] considers usage of semantics for the complete lifecycle of Semantic Web processes, which represent complex interactions between Semantic Web Services. One of the main initiatives in the Semantic Web is WSMO framework, aiming at describing the various aspects related to Semantic Web Services in order to enable the automation of Web Service discovery, composition, interoperation and invocation. In the paper the conceptual architecture for BPEL-based INFRAWEBS editor is proposed that is intended to construct a part of WSMO descriptions of the Semantic Web Services. The semantic description of Web Services has to cover Data, Functional, Execution and QoS semantics. The representation of Functional semantics can be achieved by adding the service functionality to the process description. The architecture relies on a functional (operational) semantics of the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS) and uses abstract state machine (ASM) paradigm. This allows describing the dynamic properties of the process descriptions in terms of partially ordered transition rules and transforming them to WSMO framework.

Fast Information Retrieval in the Open Grid Service Architecture

This is an extended version of an article presented at the Second International Conference on Software, Services and Semantic Technologies, Sofia, Bulgaria, 11–12 September 2010.

Pushing the Quality Level in Networked News Business: Semantic-Based Content Retrieval and Composition in International News Publishing

Electronic publishing exploits numerous possibilities to present or exchange information and to communicate via most current media like the Internet. By utilizing modern Web technologies like Web Services, loosely coupled services, and peer-to-peer networks we describe the integration of an intelligent business news presentation and distribution network. Employing semantics technologies enables the coupling of multinational and multilingual business news data on a scalable international level and thus introduce a service quality that is not achieved by alternative technologies in the news distribution area so far. Architecturally, we identified the loose coupling of existing services as the most feasible way to address multinational and multilingual news presentation and distribution networks. Furthermore we semantically enrich multinational news contents by relating them using AI techniques like the Vector Space Model. Summarizing our experiences we describe the technical integration of semantics and communication technologies in order to create a modern international news network.

A Semantic-Oriented Architecture of a Functional Module for Personalized and Adaptive Access to the Knowledge in a Multimedia Digital Library

This article presents the principal results of the doctoral thesis “Semantic-oriented Architecture and Models for Personalized and Adaptive Access to the Knowledge in Multimedia Digital Library” by Desislava Ivanova Paneva-Marinova (Institute of Mathematics and Informatics), successfully defended before the Specialised Academic Council for Informatics and Mathematical Modelling on 27 October, 2008.

INFRAWEBS Semantic Web Service Development on the Base of Knowledge Management Layer

The paper gives an overview about the ongoing FP6-IST INFRAWEBS project and describes the main layers and software components embedded in an application oriented realisation framework. An important part of INFRAWEBS is a Semantic Web Unit (SWU) – a collaboration platform and interoperable middleware for ontology-based handling and maintaining of SWS. The framework provides knowledge about a specific domain and relies on ontologies to structure and exchange this knowledge to semantic service development modules. INFRAWEBS Designer and Composer are sub-modules of SWU responsible for creating Semantic Web Services using Case-Based Reasoning approach. The Service Access Middleware (SAM) is responsible for building up the communication channels between users and various other modules. It serves as a generic middleware for deployment of Semantic Web Services. This software toolset provides a development framework for creating and maintaining the full-life-cycle of Semantic Web Services with specific application support.

Semantic Description of Web Services and Possibilities of BPEL4WS

The using of the upsurge of semantics web technologies gives a possibility for an increasing of the flexibility, extensibility and consistency of the existent industrial standards for modeling of web services. In the paper the types of semantic description of web services and the degree of their realization in BPEL4WS (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services) respectively on the abstract and executable level are treated. The methods for using of BPEL4WS for the purposes of semantic web services in the direction of their semi-automatic integration are suggested.

Using the e-Class Open Platform for e-Learning Support at the TEI of Larissa, Greece

In the current paper we firstly give a short introduction on e-learning platforms and review the case of the e-class open e-learning platform being used by the Greek tertiary education sector. Our analysis includes strategic selection issues and outcomes in general and operational and adoption issues in the case of the Technological Educational Institute (TEI) of Larissa, Greece. The methodology is being based on qualitative analysis of interviews with key actors using the platform, and statistical analysis of quantitative data related to adoption and usage in the relevant populations. The author has been a key actor in all stages and describes his insights as an early adopter, diffuser and innovative user. We try to explain the issues under consideration using existing past research outcomes and we also arrive to some conclusions and points for further research.

Fourth National Information Day and Workshop: Open Access to Scientific Information and Data

The paper presents in brief the “2nd Generation Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe” project (http://www.openaire.eu/) and what is done in Bulgaria during the last year in the area of open access to scientific information and data.