FAIR Vocabularies and where to find them

Maineri, Angelica Maria; Windhouwer, Menzo; Meijer, Kerim; Melgar Estrada, Liliana; Valdestilhas, Andre

doi:10.5281/zenodo.17530975

FAIR Vocabularies and where to find them

Maineri, Angelica Maria; Windhouwer, Menzo; Meijer, Kerim; Melgar Estrada, Liliana; Valdestilhas, Andre

Publisher: Zenodo
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17530975
Repository: zenodo.org
Language: en

Abstract

FAIR vocabularies help make data interoperable – i.e., they make it possible to exchange and reuse data across different sources. They can be used to structure the data consistently, or to point to meanings of terms as defined by wider disciplinary communities. However, FAIR vocabularies are difficult to find and reuse, especially in the social sciences, where the uptake is still low. During the presentation, we focus on FAIR vocabularies as resources enabling the I principle of FAIR (Interoperability), and explain the difference between the main types of vocabularies (e.g., controlled vocabularies, thesauri, ontologies, etc…) by means of concrete examples. Moreover, we demonstrate the use of the SSH FAIR vocabulary registry, a platform developed by CLARIAH to facilitate the retrieval and reuse of FAIR vocabularies, by making it possible to search, query and inspect vocabularies that are relevant for the field. Next to the Registry, we also present the SSH FAIR Vocabulary Guidelines, namely step-by-step tutorials which guide SSH practitioners not only in finding but also in creating, adapting, and reusing, FAIR vocabularies. By the end of the presentation, the audience will have a better understanding of FAIR vocabularies concepts and applications, and know about the SSH FAIR Vocabulary registry to search vocabularies that are relevant to the SSH field.

Full text

Open Data Infrastructure for Social Science and Economic Innovations FAIR Vocabularies and where to find them 1 Angelica Maineri & SSHOC-NL Task 4.1 Team 04-11-2025 | ODISSEI conference The ODISSEI Portal is developed within a Roadmap Project funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) under grant number 184.035.014. Menzo Windhouwer (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2204-4018) (1) Kerim Meijer (1) Liliana Melgar (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2003-4200) (1) Angelica Maineri (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6978-5278) (2) André Valdestilhas (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0079-2533) (3) (1) KNAW Humanities Cluster, Digital Infrastructure Department (2) Open Data Infrastructure for Social Science and Economic Innovation (ODISSEI) consortium (3) Vrije Universiteit (VU) 3 My dataset is about the state of banks in the Zuid-Holland region My dataset is about the state of banks in the ZuidHolland region 4 Why (controlled) vocabularies? They are needed for establishing shared meaning and enabling connections ●Human-readable disambiguation ●Machine-actionability (FAIR) Vocabularies are then an essential part of research, data curation, and interoperability But…there is no common understanding of what “vocabularies” are and how to use them in practice in the social sciences 5 FAIR & vocabularies I2: (Meta)data use vocabularies that follow the FAIR principles When we are describing data or metadata, we often use vocabularies that provide the terms or concepts that are adequate to represent their content. However, if we use vocabularies in our data or metadata, we should make sure that they are also FAIR in their own right [...] Source: GOFAIR Foundation (Original formulation of FAIR principles) 6 Let’s look at… -Types of vocabularies… -… and where to find them - Next steps Controlled terminologies (‘value vocabulary’) “a normative collection of terms, the spelling of which is fixed and for which additional information may be provided such as a definition, a set of synonyms, an editor, a version, as well as a licence determining the condition of use” Rocca-Serra, P. & Gray, A.G.J. (nd). FAIR Cookbook –Chapter 3 Introduction to terminologies and ontologies. Controlled terminologies: Taxonomies Taxonomy of religious denominations by Rick Mourits 9 for hierarchical relationships FAIR (?) vocabularies →Represent value vocabularies in machine-readable format using SKOS/RDF →Represent property vocabularies in OWL/RDF →Identify each term with a unique identifier (URI) →Make findable? Existing vocabulary (semantic artifacts) registries Generic registries: ○Linked Open Vocabularies ○Bartoc.org ○Ontoportal Alliance (wip: Socioportal) ○FAIRsharing.eu We need(ed) one registry for SSH 1 7 The SSH FAIR vocabulary registry registry.vocabs.clariah.nl/ The SSH FAIR vocabulary registry registry.vocabs.clariah.nl/ Detailed page per vocabulary 2 0 registry.vocabs.clariah.nl/ FAIR vocabulary recommender ●Automatically checks on whether a vocabulary exists in other registries (e.g., Bartoc or LOV) ●Registry gets user reviews (stars and comments) ●Recommender Processes these inputs and give recommendations ●Also recommendations based on user-provided csv (schema) Next step: Guidelines and How Tos Goal: ●Clarify concepts and terminology ●Provide practical “how to” guidelines about reusing and adapting semantic resources in research, for SSH practitioners Do you want to collaborate on writing the Guidelines? >> [email protected]