Linked Research on the Decentralised Web

Stakeholders acting as external forces in scholarly communication:

• Research sponsors
• Knowledge workers
• The public
• The industry

Global deficiencies in scholarly communication:

• Restricted access to humans and machines.
• Non-interoperable Web systems.
• Lack of diverse value chains.
• Web affordances neglected.
• Inadequate use of identifiers and data storage, and privacy issues.

Technical Research Goals

Create missing Web recommendations.

Build an interoperable Web application for common scholarly activities.

Knowledge Goals

Identify constraints and limitations.

Requirements to exchange human- and machine-readable units of information.

Artifacts to (re)design, requirements to satisfy, stakeholders’ goals to achieve, and the problem context.

Central Design Problem

How can we design decentralised Web applications for information exchange in an open and decoupled scholarly communication ecosystem?

Mechanisms

What technical mechanisms, standards or protocols are necessary for decentralised information exchange on the Web? Which already exist and what is missing?

Artifacts

How can Web technologies be employed to fulfill the core functions of scholarly communication in an open and interoperable way?

• How can we situate scholarly communication using the Web with respect to technological communication mediums and scientific paradigms?
• What are the core components of scientific communication, how are they configured, and what are the effects of the interactions between them?
• What are contemporary practices around knowledge creation and dissemination, and how are communities working to improve these?

Answers knowledge questions:

• Mediums and Paradigms
• Web: A Social Machine
• A Brief History of Scholarship on the Web
• Social Scholarly Web
• Forces and Functions
• Effects and Artifacts
• Understanding the Medium

Answers knowledge questions:

• Information Spaces
• Structure and Semantics
• Existing Markup Patterns

Extensions to knowledge and design of technical artifacts.

Contributions on publishing and exchanging statistical Linked Data:

• Linked SDMX Data, Capadisli, Auer, Ngonga Ngomo, Semantic Web Journal, 2013
• Linked Statistical Data Analysis, Capadisli, Meroño-Peñuela, Auer, Riedl, ISWC SemStats, 2014

Answers knowledge questions:

• Control Yourself, Decentralised Dataspaces, Read-Write Linked Data
• Universal Identity for the Web, Authentication and Authorization
• Persistence and Preservation
• Decentralised Storage and Interoperable Applications
• Design Decisions for Decentralisation

Extensions to knowledge.

Contributions on common patterns on architectural designs, classification of specifications:

• Degree of Control
• Forces and Functions in Specifications
• The Effects and Artifacts of Autonomous Engagement

Answers technical research problems on how to design a decentralised notification protocol.

Contributions:

• Linked Data Notifications: a resource centric communication protocol, Capadisli, Guy, Lange, Auer, Sambra, Berners-Lee, ESWC (Best Student Paper Award) 2016
• Linked Data Notifications, Capadisli, Guy, W3C (Recommendation), 2017

Answers technical research problems on how to design a decentralised application. Contributions:

• Linking the Decentralised Information Space
• Decentralised Authoring, Annotations and Notifications for a Read-Write Web with dokieli, Capadisli, Guy, Verborgh, Lange, Auer, Berners-Lee, ICWE Application, 2017
• Forces and Functions in dokieli

To enable creators and consumers of open knowledge, and generalisation of core principles to set a shift in scholarly communication.

Contributions:

• Design Principles
• Call for Linked Research
• Forces and Functions of Linked Research
• Linked Research as a Paradigm

Forces

Actor

Content

Accessibility

Applicability

Functions

Registration

Awareness

Certification

Archiving

The core design components of the Web:

• Identification (URI)
• Interaction (HTTP)
• Data Formats (resource representations)

Axiom 0a: Universality 2

Any resource of significance should be given a URI.

Axiom 2b: identity

the significance of identity for a given URI is determined by the person who owns the URI, who first determined what it points to.

<https://csarven.ca/#i>
  a foaf:Person ;
  foaf:name "Sarven Capadisli"@en ;
  foaf:img <https://csarven.ca/media/images/sarven-capadisli.jpg> ;
  cert:key <https://csarven.ca/#key-e785> ;
  foaf:knows <https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/card#i> ;
  pim:storage <https://csarven.ca/> ;
  ldp:inbox <https://csarven.ca/inbox/> ;
  as:outbox <https://csarven.ca/outbox/> .

Data on the Web should not be locked in to particular systems or be only readable by the applications which created it. Users should be free to switch between applications and share data between them.

dokieli is a clientside editor for decentralised article publishing, annotations and social interactions.

• Separation of Layers
• Human- and Machine-Interpretable
• Composability
• Presentation
• Behaviour

• Read-Write, Identifiers, Content-Negotiated Serialisation
• Notification Inbox, Annotation Service
• Provenance and Memento, Resource archiving, Robust Links Link Decoration
• Internationalization and Localization
• License

• Articles
• Annotations
• Notifications
• Profiles

Actor

Any web agent — person or software — can use WebIDs.

Content

Actors can author, publish, and reuse Linked Data resources.

Accessibility

Actors can access representations of access controlled Web resources.

Applicability

Expressibility and sharing units of information re applicability.

Registration

Articles, annotations, and notifications can be assigned HTTP URIs.

Awareness

Notifications to document, profile, or community managed inboxes.

Certification

Units of information at any level of granularity can be annotated.

Archiving

Informing of archiving systems. Robust citations.

Autonomy

Actors without technical constraints on how they communicate.

Universal access

Any agent accessing and interacting with different systems.

Self-publishing entails that an actor can register identifiers for their content, shape and store data where they have access to, set access control policies, and use preferred applications to achieve them.

Notifications about scholarly activities (articles, annotations, citations..)

• A notification MUST conform to one of the specified data shapes;
• MUST refer to Linked Data resources;
• MUST refer to free and publicly accessible resources.

What technical mechanisms, standards or protocols can be employed for decentralised information exchange on the Web?

Linked Data Notifications: affords high degree of controls to actors;

triggers registration, fulfills awareness, supports certification and archiving.

How can Web technologies be employed to fulfill the core functions of scholarly communication in an open and interoperable way?

dokieli: enable actors to reach a high degree of control over their creations and social activities;

operates under a scholarly ecosystem where applications are decoupled to fulfill registration, awareness, certification, and archiving.

• PAYGO Linked Data
• FAIR Linked Data
• Decentralised Identity and Authentication
• Interoperable Applications
• Sociotechnical Centralisation
• AAA in RACA
• School of Thought

• Sociotechnical Advancement
• Addressing Social Implications
• Extended Profiles
• Privacy Aware Information Spaces
• Lossless Citations
• RACA-Aware Applications
• On-Demand Archiving
• Linked Data-Aware User Agents
• Third-Party Control Considered Harmful