How does Linked
Open Data change
the publishing
landscape?
9/5/2013
Quentin Reul

I-Semantics 2013
9th International Conference on Semantic Systems
About Quentin
 Academic Background
— PhD in Computing Science, 2012
 Applied Semantic Web technologies to enable jet engine designer to retrieve service
information
 Developed a new approach to map entities in different ontologies based on their
definition [http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.558665]
 Involved in the development of the W3C SKOS Standard
— BSc in Computing Science and AI, 2005
 Work Experience (2008-Present)
— Content Semantics Architect @ Wolters Kluwer
 Maintains and extends the Platform Content Interface (PCI) standard
 Help in the development of auto-classification and enrichment solutions
— Researcher @ Vrjie Universiteit Brussels
 Developed semantic models for enabling the exchange of personal data across the
web;
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Overview
 Introduction
 The new competition
 Not all doom and gloom
 Conclusion
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INTRODUCTION
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I-Semantics 2013
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Remember Blockbuster?
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Blockbuster didn’t manage to keep up
with market shifts and technical
advances in the movie rental business.

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Digital
 Can be accessed worldwide;
 Does not take physical space
(beyond device);
 Easy to make correction and
update;
 Can include structure for
machine interpretation;
 Interactive user feedback;
 Personalized on-demand
content (e.g. RSS, Flipboard)
Print
 Tend to be focused on (and
only available in) a single
region;
 Takes up physical space;
 Difficult to make correction
and update;
 Difficult for machine to
interpret content;
 Many users still prefer the feel
of paper
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Digital vs. Print Media (I)

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Digital vs. Print Media (II)
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Comparison of print vs. digital
advertisement in newspapers over last
decade shows a significant reduction
in advertising in print, while a small
increase in digital advertising.
Source: http://tinyurl.com/bu35hlg

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Digital vs. Print Media (III)
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0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Internet/Online Print
WK Revenue over the last 10 years
show an increase in digital
subscription, but a decrease in terms
of overall subscription to our content.
Source: http://www.wolterskluwer.com/Press/Reports/

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THE NEW COMPETITION
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Open Data
Open data is data that can be freely used, reused and
redistributed by anyone - subject only, at most, to the
requirement to attribute and sharealike.
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Source: http://opendefinition.org/okd/

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Open Gov Data (I)
 Principles:
— Data must be complete, primary, timely, accessible, machine
processable, non-discriminatory, non-proprietary, and license-
free.
 Main benefits:
— to provide transparency to increase governmental
accountability by releasing data produced by governments;
— to increase citizen engagement and participation in
governance process;
— to reduce government costs.
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Open Gov Data (II)
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0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Data should be available
online?
Data should be free? Entrepreneurs will create new
products?
citizens government employees
Source: 2010 Open Government Data Benchmark Study, 2011. http://www.socrata.com/benchmark-study

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Germany: Offener Haushalt
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Source: http://bund.offenerhaushalt.de/
Offener Haushalt is a project to access
and visualize expenditure data from
German Federal agencies.

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Open Gov Data in Legal Domain
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How much of your
published content is
“primary source”?
How much of the primary
source content you
publish is freely available
on the web?
What are the most significant
OpenGov initiatives in your
geography / business area?
L&B US
60% 90% FOIA, e-Gov act, FDSys, data.gov,
uniform law (states)
WK Belgium
40%;
for legal market 68%
90%, but not
consolidated
Staatsblad.be; Juridat.be;
FOD
WK Deutschland
50% 80% Currently mostly local govt data.
Fed initiative in 2012
WK Espana
65% 100% Improved public access to CENDOJ
(off. case law DB)
WK Italy
40% 30% Normattiva
WK France
Lamyline: 50 % ;
Lamylexplus:100 %
90 % lot of initiatives
WK Portugal
40% 100% None
WK Nederland
56% 75-80% legislation
80-90% case law
Wetten.overheid.nl
Rechtspraak.nl

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U.S.: GovTrack.us
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Enables citizens to track proposed
laws in the U.S. Congress and contains
data from 1979 onwards.
It was developed by civic
hackers based on open data.

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U.S.: Ravel
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Source: https://www.ravellaw.com/
Ravel focuses on delivering a new way
to visualize on federal and state court
decisions.
It was developed by Stanford
Law School graduates based on
open data.

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E.U.: Parltrack
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Source: http://parltrack.euwiki.org/
Aggregates data from distributed open
repositories enabling citizens
engagement.

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NOT ALL DOOM AND GLOOM
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Leveraging Open Data - OpenCorporates
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API to retrieve information (e.g.
company name, address, trademark
registration, etc.) about companies in
65 jurisdictions.
Source: http://opencorporates.com/
The content is available under the ODC
Open Database License, which allows free
re-use of the data.

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Linked Data (I)
"The Semantic Web is not a separate Web but an
extension of the current one, in which [data] is given
well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and
people to work in cooperation.“
- Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila; Scientific American, May 2001
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Linked Data (II)
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Source: http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html

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Linked Data Cloud
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Linking Open Data cloud diagram, by Richard Cyganiak and Anja Jentzsch. http://lod-cloud.net/

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Leveraging Linked Data on the Web (I)
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Documents indexed against WK topics could
be retrieved using topics defined in external
knowledge organization systems.

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Leveraging Linked Data on the Web (I)
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United States
Codified Tax
Regulation (26
CFR) structure to
navigate content
Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/26

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Leveraging Linked Data on the Web (I)
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List of documents
in WK publication
(Internal Revenue
Code) that are
related based on
nodes

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Leveraging Linked Data on the Web (II)
 Which person is one of the contributor of Abbey Road?
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InstanceRelationship
SELECT ?img
WHERE {
?name a foaf:Person .
?name dc:contributor dbpedia:Abbey_Road .
?name foaf:depiction ?img .
}
Class
Natural language queries can be
converted in SPARQL to retrieve answers
from one or more repositories.

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CONCLUSION
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Traditional publishers will survive if they
 Leverage open data as much as possible;
 Leverage structured data to provide new functionality to
consumers;
 Leverage software to generate new structured data from
unstructured data (e.g. text);
 Be aware that traditional publishers are no longer your
main rivals;
 Promote innovation by
— Enabling employees to explore new technologies and
concepts;
— Having a group dedicated to innovation; and
— Having hackathons.
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