Best practice for publication of dataset as part of an external publication

[jucajuca]

Dear SEMIC,

There is an ongoing discussion about the best practice for the isReferencedBy property. The specification allows any rdf:ressource for this property.

Some data providers provide an IRI for this property, yet others think that this should be a foaf:Document (example below). There are even more possibilities and this makes the handling of the data difficult.

Do you have plans to specify what kind of data should be entered in this property? Or are there best practices regarding this?

PREFIX dcat:  <http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#>
PREFIX dct:   <http://purl.org/dc/terms/>
PREFIX foaf:  <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>
PREFIX owl:   <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#>
PREFIX rdf:   <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#>
PREFIX vcard: <http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/ns#>

<http://data.europa.eu/88u/distribution/05abc443-f580-47c7-acae-9f5fd91bc7a8>
        rdf:type          dcat:Distribution;
        dct:accessRights  <http://data.jrc.ec.europa.eu/access-rights/no-limitations>;
        dct:description   "Country-specific GHG emission factors for electricity consumption"@en;
        dct:format        <http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/file-type/XLSX>;
        dct:identifier    "\"GHG Emission Factors for Electricity Consumption\"@en";
        dct:license       <http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/licence/CC_BY_4_0>;
        dct:title         "GHG Emission Factors for Electricity Consumption"@en;
        dct:type          <http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/distribution-type/DOWNLOADABLE_FILE>;
        dcat:downloadURL  <https://jeodpp.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ftp/public/JRC-OpenData/CoM/EmissionsFactorElectricity/CoM-Emission-factors-for-national-electricity-2024.xlsx> .

<http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/corporate-body/JRC>
        rdf:type       foaf:Organization;
        foaf:homepage  <https://ec.europa.eu/info/departments/joint-research-centre>;
        foaf:name      "European Commission, Joint Research Centre"@en .

<http://data.europa.eu/88u/dataset/919df040-0252-4e4e-ad82-c054896e1641>
        rdf:type                   dcat:Dataset;
        <http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/creator>
                "Bastos, Joana; Monforti-Ferrario, Fabio; Melica, Giulia";
        dct:accrualPeriodicity     <http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/frequency/BIENNIAL>;
        dct:bibliographicCitation  "Bastos, Joana;  Monforti-Ferrario, Fabio;  Melica, Giulia (2024): GHG Emission Factors for Electricity Consumption. European Commission, Joint Research Centre [Dataset] PID: http://data.europa.eu/89h/919df040-0252-4e4e-ad82-c054896e1641";
        dct:creator                <http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/corporate-body/JRC>;
        dct:description            "In the context of EU and Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, the JRC provides energy related GHG emission factors. This dataset provides updated CoM emission factors for national electricity consumption (also referred to as National and European Emission Factors for Electricity - NEEFE).\n\nThree types of emission factors can be found in this dataset, following two approaches: an activity-based (IPCC) approach and a life-cycle (LC) approach. In the activity-based approach, (i) an emission factor is provided for CO2 emissions (in tonnes of CO2/MWh) only, and (ii) another for GHG emissions, namely CO2, CH4 and N2O (in tonnes of CO2-eq/MWh); in the LC approach (iii) an emission factor is provided accounting for GHG emissions, namely CO2, N2O and CH4 (in tonnes of CO2-eq/MWh), including upstream (supply chain) emissions.\n\nFurther details on the data and methodology used to calculate the emission factors presented in this version can be found in Bastos, Monforti-Ferrario and Melica (2024)."@en;
        dct:identifier             "http://data.europa.eu/89h/919df040-0252-4e4e-ad82-c054896e1641";
        dct:isPartOf               <https://data.jrc.ec.europa.eu/collection/id-00172>;
        dct:isReferencedBy         [ rdf:type                   foaf:Document;
                                     <http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/creator>
                                             "BASTOS, JOANA; MONFORTI-FERRARIO, Fabio; MELICA, GIULIA";
                                     <http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/publisher>
                                             "European Commission";
                                     dct:bibliographicCitation  "Bastos, J., Monforti-Ferrario, F. and Melica, G., GHG Emission Factors for Electricity Consumption, European Commission, 2024, JRC136340.";
                                     dct:issued                 "2024"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#gYear>;
                                     dct:title                  "GHG Emission Factors for Electricity Consumption"@en;
                                     owl:sameAs                 <https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC136340>
                                   ];
        dct:issued                 "2024-01-17"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#date>;
        dct:language               <http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/language/ENG>;
        dct:publisher              <http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/corporate-body/JRC>;
        dct:spatial                <https://unstats.un.org/unsd/methodology/m49/001> , <http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/continent/EUROPE>;
        dct:temporal               [ rdf:type                       dct:PeriodOfTime;
                                     <http://schema.org/endDate>    "2021-01-01"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#date>;
                                     <http://schema.org/startDate>  "1990-01-01"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#date>
                                   ];
        dct:title                  "GHG Emission Factors for Electricity Consumption"@en;
        dcat:contactPoint          [ rdf:type        vcard:Kind;
                                     vcard:hasEmail  <mailto:[email protected]>
                                   ];
        dcat:distribution          <http://data.europa.eu/88u/distribution/05abc443-f580-47c7-acae-9f5fd91bc7a8>;
        dcat:keyword               "electricity"@en , "emission factor"@en , "energy"@en , "GHG"@en , "greenhouse gas"@en , "emission inventory"@en;
        dcat:landingPage           <https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/energy-efficiency/urban-areas/covenant-mayors>;
        dcat:theme                 <http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/data-theme/ENER> , <http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/data-theme/ENVI> .

[H-a-g-L]

@jucajuca - The example provided follows the DCAT-AP-JRC extension, where the range defined for dct:isReferencedBy is foaf:Document. However, the RDF representation shown in your example above is the result of a legacy publishing mechanism which is currently being revised. Below is an example of the updated RDF:

<http://data.europa.eu/89h/7520c0f6-a54c-41e7-8f13-1ea3abfac320> 
	a			<http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#Dataset>;
	dct:title		"GHS-SDATA R2023A - GHS supporting data"@en;
	dct:isReferencedBy	<https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC133256>;
 
<https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC133256> 
	a		foaf:Document;
	dct:issued	"2024-07-25"^^xsd:date;
	dct:title	"GHSL Data Package 2023"@en;
	dc:creator	"SCHIAVINA, Marcello; MELCHIORRI, MICHELE; PESARESI, Martino; POLITIS, Panagiotis; CARNEIRO FREIRE, SERGIO MANUEL; MAFFENINI, Luca; FLORIO, PIETRO; EHRLICH, Daniele; GOCH, Katarzyna; CARIOLI, ALESSANDRA; UHL, JOHANNES; TOMMASI, Pierpaolo; KEMPER, Thomas";
	dc:publisher	"Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, Luxembourg";
	dct:abstract	"The Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) produces new global spatial information, evidence-based analytics and [...]""@en;
	dct:bibliographicCitation "SCHIAVINA, M., MELCHIORRI, M., PESARESI, M., POLITIS, P., CARNEIRO FREIRE, S.M., MAFFENINI, L., FLORIO, P., EHRLICH, D., GOCH, K., CARIOLI, A., UHL, J., TOMMASI, P. and KEMPER, T., GHSL Data Package 2023, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2023, doi:10.2760/098587 (online),10.2760/20212 (print), JRC133256.";
	dct:creator	[a foaf:Person ; 
				foaf:familyName "PESARESI"@en ; 
				foaf:givenName	"Martino"@en ; 
				foaf:name	"PESARESI, Martino"@en],
				[...];
	dct:identifier	"https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC133256"^^xsd:anyURI;
	adms:identifier	[a adms:Identifier ; 
				skos:notation "978-92-68-02341-9 (online)" ; 
				adms:schemeAgency	"ISBN"],
			[a adms:Identifier ; 
				skos:notation	"10.2760/098587 (online)" ; 
				adms:schemeAgency	"DOI"].

[bertvannuffelen]

@jucajuca and @H-a-g-L this case is a common situation and it is hard to make a universal decision upon.
It is a data exchange challenge.

My advice would be always according to the following principles (choices in order of preference)

1. ensure that one can share information by reference (not by copy/embedded). That means that the value shared by dct:isReferencedBy should be a proper dereferenceable URI. In this case sharing the information according to the example by @H-a-g-L is recommended as it can be assumed that the reciever can retrieve more information if required. Embedding is then more an data exchange optimalisation.
2. If not possible to provide a proper dereferenceable URI then the embedded option is chosen.

The issue is that in a broad data exchange context with many different maturity levels to be integrated one cannot force easily the first option as the sole and mandatory to be applied solution. This is a voluntary case.
In this case it would be very ambitious as the ranges values are instances of very broad things (documents, papers, videos, chats, ...) And there is no universal index for that.

Typically that raises the question: can't we harmonise then the circumscription of the target values?
For that I am reluctant because DCAT-AP is not about describing how documents should be documented.
So in case this is a specific requirement in your context the message from DCAT-AP perspective is that you are free to choose your agreement.