CS AKTive Space: or How We Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Semantic Web

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Description/Abstract

Abstract. We present a Semantic Web application that we call CS AKTive Space. The application exploits a wide range of semantically heterogeneous and distributed content relating to Computer Science research in the UK. This content is gathered on a continuous basis using a variety of methods including harvesting and scraping as well as adopting a range models for content acquisition. The content currently comprises around five million RDF triples and we have developed storage, retrieval and maintenance methods to support its management. The content is mediated through an ontology constructed for the application domain and incorporates components from other published ontologies. CS AKTive Space supports the exploration of patterns and implications inherent in the content and exploits a variety of visualisations and multi dimensional representations. Knowledge services supported in the application include investigating communities of practice: who is working, researching or publishing with whom. This work illustrates a number of substantial challenges for the Semantic Web. These include problems of referential integrity, tractable inference and interaction support. We review our approaches to these issues and discuss relevant related work. Socio technical issues are outlined that are seen to be critical for the success or failure of our endeavour.