ApplicationProfiles/TermDecisionTree

KIM-AG-IM,DCUB  Work-in-progress

= "DCAM-compliant" metadata terms: a decision tree =

Is your metadata term DCAM compliant: how to tell
There are four types of "metadata term" defined in the DCMI Abstract Model (DCAM): These are therefore the only types of term that have a defined role in DCAM-based metadata. The DCAM also requires that instances of Property, Class, SES, and VES be identified with Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). The following questions determine whether a given term fits this known typology and is therefore suitable for use in DCAM-based application profiles and metadata descriptions.
 * Properties (also known as Elements)
 * Classes
 * Vocabulary Encoding Schemes (VES)
 * Syntax Encoding Schemes (SES).


 * 1) Has the term been assigned a "proper" URI (see discussion below)?  If not, the term is not citable in RDF statements and is therefore not usable in DCAM-based metadata.  The term is therefore not "DCAM-compliant".
 * 2) Has the term been explicitly declared, in an RDF schema, as an "RDF property"  or a subclass thereof (see discussion below)?  If so, it is a Property; stop.  If no, go to the next question.
 * 3) Has the term been explicitly declared, in an RDF schema, as an "RDF class"  or a subclass thereof (see discussion below)?  If so, it is a Class; stop.  If no, go to the next question.
 * 4) Has the term been explicitly declared, in an RDF schema, as an "RDF datatype"  or a subclass thereof (see discussion below)?  If so, it is a Syntax Encoding Scheme; stop.  If no, go to the next question.
 * 5) Has the term been explicitly declared, in an RDF schema, as a DCAM "vocabulary encoding scheme"  or a subclass thereof (see discussion below)?  If so, it is a Vocabulary Encoding Scheme; stop.  If no, then the term in question is not clearly defined according to the typology of terms recognized by the DCAM and is therefore not "DCAM-compliant".

Discussion

 * Declaration in an RDF schema. RDF schemas state how a given terms fit into typologies defined by standard specifications such as "RDF Vocabulary Description Language 1.0: RDF Schema" and "DCMI Abstract Model" .  Example schemas include those of DCMI Metadata Terms, the SKOS Core vocabulary , and the RDF Vocabulary Description Language (RDF Schema) itselfhttp://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema .  For example, the term "Publisher" is declared as an "RDF property" in the RDF schema for DCMI Metadata Terms as follows :

 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available.  ... 


 * Making RDF schemas available. The W3C note "Best Practice Recipes for Publishing RDF Vocabularies" describes how HTTP redirects should be used to redirect from term URIs to the RDF schemas used to describe those terms.  As described in the note, RDF schemas should ideally be made available on servers configured to provide HTML Web page or RDF schema representations of term declarations via content negotiation on the basis of browser preferences (  or  ).


 * "Proper" URIs. By convention, new terms coined during the creation of an application profile are often assigned temporary URIs using the domain name  .  As   URIs cannot be made to resolve to term declarations, such provisional URIs should be replaced by proper URIs on which metadata can be based.  "Proper" URIs are URIs under a domain in which the authors of the terms are authorized to coin such URIs.


 * Types of terms and subclasses thereof. Types of terms defined as subclasses of the classes listed above can be used in DCAM-based metadata -- e.g., from the Web Ontology language :   is a subclass of   and   is a subproperty of.