Markus Luczak-Rösch

Designing for Citizen Data Analysis: A Cross-Sectional Case Study of a Multi-Domain Citizen Science Platform

Designing an effective and sustainable citizen science (CS)project requires consideration of a great number of factors. This makes the overall process unpredictable, even when a sound, user-centred design approach is followed by an experienced team of UX designers. Moreover, when such systems are deployed, the complexity of the resulting interactions challenges any attempt to generalisation from retrospective analysis. In this paper, we present a case study of the largest single platform of citizen driven data analysis projects to date, the Zooniverse. By eliciting, through structured reflection, experiences of core members of its design team, our grounded analysis yielded four sets of themes, focusing on Task Specificity, Community Development, Task Design and Public Relations and Engagement, supported by two-to-four specific design claims each. For each, we propose a set of design claims (DCs), drawing comparisons to the literature on crowdsourcing and online communities to contextualise our findings.

Collaborative ontology engineering: a survey

Building ontologies in a collaborative and increasingly community-driven fashion has become a central paradigm of modern ontology engineering. This understanding of ontologies and ontology engineering processes is the result of intensive theoretical and empirical research within the Semantic Web community, supported by technology developments such as Web 2.0. Over 6 years after the publication of the first methodology for collaborative ontology engineering, it is generally acknowledged that, in order to be useful, but also economically feasible, ontologies should be developed and maintained in a community-driven manner, with the help of fully-fledged environments providing dedicated support for collaboration and user participation. Wikis, and similar communication and collaboration platforms enabling ontology stakeholders to exchange ideas and discuss modeling decisions are probably the most important technological components of such environments. In addition, process-driven methodologies assist the ontology engineering team throughout the ontology life cycle, and provide empirically grounded best practices and guidelines for optimizing ontology development results in real-world projects. The goal of this article is to analyze the state of the art in the field of collaborative ontology engineering. We will survey several of the most outstanding methodologies, methods and techniques that have emerged in the last years, and present the most popular development environments, which can be utilized to carry out, or facilitate specific activities within the methodologies. A discussion of the open issues identified concludes the survey and provides a roadmap for future research and development in this lively and promising field

Usage analysis and the web of data

The workshop on Usage Analysis and the Web of Data (USEWOD2011) was the first workshop in the field to investigate combinations of usage data with semantics and the Web of Data. Questions the workshop aims to address are for example: How can semantics help in understanding usage data, how can semantic information be derived from usage data, and how can we learn about usage of and on the emerging Web of Data, and what can we learn from it? We report on the findings and results of this workshop, held on March 28, 2011 in conjunction with 20th International World Wide Web Conference, in Hyderabad, India.

Semantic enrichment by non-experts: usability of manual annotation tools

Most of the semantic content available has been generated automatically by using annotation services for existing content. Automatic annotation is not of sufficient quality to enable focused search and retrieval: either too many or too few terms are semantically annotated. User-defined semantic enrichment allows for a more targeted approach. We developed a tool for semantic annotation of digital documents and conducted an end-user study to evaluate its acceptance by and usability for non-expert users. This paper presents the results of this user study and discusses the lessons learned about both the semantic enrichment process and our methodology of exposing non-experts to semantic enrichment.

Managing Ontology Lifecycles in Corporate Settings

Corporate Semantic Web describes the application of semantic technologies within enterprises for better knowledge management or enhanced IT service management. But, well-known cost- and process-oriented problems of ontology engineering hinder the employment of ontologies as a flexible, scalable, and cost effective means for integrating data in small and mid-sized enterprises.We propose an innovative ontology lifecycle, examine existing tools towards the functional requirements of the lifecycle phases, and propose the vision of an architecture supporting them integratively.

User-Defined semantic enrichment of full-text documents: experiences and lessons learned

Semantic annotation of digital documents is typically done at meta-data level. However, for fine-grained access semantic enrichment of text elements or passages is needed. Automatic annotation is not of sufficient quality to enable focused search and retrieval: either too many or too few terms are semantically annotated. User-defined semantic enrichment allows for a more targeted approach. We developed a tool for semantic annotation of digital documents and conducted a number of studies to evaluate its acceptance by and usability for non-expert users. This paper discusses the lessons learned about both the semantic enrichment process and our methodology of exposing non-experts to semantic enrichment.

Corporate Semantic Web: Towards the Deployment of Semantic Technologies in Enterprises

The amount of information that companies have to produce, acquire, maintain, propagate, and use has increased dramatically over the last decades. Nowadays, companies seek more capable approaches for gaining, managing, and utilizing knowledge, and the Semantic Web offers promising solutions. While the global Semantic Web still remains an unfulfilled vision for the present, the Corporate Semantic Web idea aims at bringing semantic technologies to enterprises. The expected results are a competitive advantage for enterprises using semantic technologies and a boost for the evolution of the global Semantic Web.

Internet use, in- and exclusion in decision-making processes within political parties

This paper investigates the effect of internet-use on democratic decision-making processes within political parties. Through two case studies of the Green Party and the Pirate Party Germany, the influence of internet-use on these processes and their inclusiveness are shown. We argue that how the internet is used in democratic processes impacts on participation and inclusion. How internet technology interacts with decision making processes within parties depends on the existing party structure and culture. Thus, in order to achieve meaningful and inclusive participation, the institutional framework and the influence it has must be considered in process and tool design. Whereas the affordances of specific online tools have been evaluated, the institutional context in which they are embedded have so far been widely ignored. We offer a structure for analysis of these foundations.

Corporate Semantic Web – Semantische Technologien in Unternehmen

ZusammenfassungDas Verwalten, Aggregieren und Anbieten von Informationen rückt für Unternehmen immer mehr in den Mittelpunkt, wobei die Menge, Hetereogenität und Vielfältigkeit von Information ein problematischer Aspekt bei deren Integration bleibt. Semantische Technologien eröffnen Unternehmen neue Möglichkeiten für das Verarbeiten: Eine Repräsentation mit Hilfe von Ontologien erlaubt wegen des dadurch implizierten gemeinsamen Verständnisses der Anwendungsdomäne ein Nutzen der Informationen über Anwendungs- und Unternehmensgrenzen hinweg und ein Ableiten von darin implizit enthaltenen Informationen. Semantische Technologien werden bislang jedoch recht selten in produktiven System angewendet. Angesichts der in diesem Artikel vorgestellten Hürden für den erfolgreichen Einsatz von semantischen Technologien in Unternehmen beschäftigt sich der Forschungsbereich Corporate Semantic Web mit Konzepten und Lösungen für die Akquise, Verwaltung und Nutzung von Wissen bei informationsintensiven Anwendungen im Unternehmenskontext. In diesem Artikel wird insbesondere auf die Bereiche Ontologie-Entwicklung, Kollaboration und semantische Suche eingegangen: Zunächst werden Herausforderungen auf den Gebieten Ontologie-Entwicklung und der kollaborativen Arbeit an Ontologien beschrieben und Lösungsansätze vorgestellt, anschließend illustrieren zwei Beispielanwendungen die Verwendung von semantischen Technologien im Unternehmenskontext.

Die Rolle der Anfragesprache SPARQL im Kontext von Linked Data

Mit der Etablierung der Linked-Data-Prinzipien ist der Weg bereitet um das bekannte globale Netz aus Dokumenten in einen vernetzten Informationsraum aus Rohdaten zu uberfuhren. Technologisch erlaubt Linked Data die maximale Dezentralisierung von Datenhaltung und -verarbeitung und hat sich als effiziente Technologie zur Datenintegration etabliert. Doch wie weit sind wir auf dem Weg das World Wide Web anzufragen als ware es eine einzige grose Datenbank? Dieses Kapitel gibt einen Uberblick daruber, wie Linked Data im Sinne der Web-Architektur konsumiert werden kann und diskutiert im Speziellen die Rolle der RDF-Anfragesprache SPARQL . Ziel ist es zu informieren, welche Vorteile eine komplexe Anfragesprache in Linked-Data-Anwendungsfallen haben kann, welche Probleme insbesondere im Kontext des offentlichen Web of Data auftreten und welche Alternativen derzeit in der Forschung entwickelt werden.