Existing specifications can be found through:
DCMI defines general properties for describing resources, e.g. dcterms:created and dcterms:modified. The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set describes 15 properties that have been endorsed in IETF, ISO and ANSI/NISO standards. DCMI Metadata Terms specifies all properties maintained by DCMI. Both are among the most referenced linked open vocabularies. DCMI has a clear governance and operation structure.
FOAF is among the most referenced and oldest linked open vocabularies. It is managed more in the style of an open source project than as a standard. It is unclear whether contributing to the project would be productive; Dan Brickley is the only editor, and his focus is on Schema.org.
foaf:Person has no properties for additional names, honorific suffixes or death dates.foaf:Organization has no properties for identifiers, classifications or dissolution dates.foaf:member is the only way to describe the relation between foaf:Person and foaf:Organization.foaf:phone can’t disambiguate between different types of telephone numbers, e.g. landline versus mobile.Schema.org allows webmasters to provide structured data to search providers using HTML markup. Google, Yahoo! and Bing announced Schema.org in 2011. Contributions are made through the W3C Web Schemas Task Force, part of the W3C Semantic Web Interest Group.
schema:Person has no properties for alternate names or external links.schema:legalName is only one type of alternate name for a schema:Organization.schema:duns, schema:globalLocationNumber, schema:taxID and schema:vatID may be used to identify a schema:Organization.schema:isicV4 and schema:naics may be used to classify a schema:Organization.schema:member (and its inverse schema:memberOf) is the only way to describe the relation between schema:Person and schema:Organization.schema:PostalAddress disambiguates between different types of telephone numbers by adding new properties.schema:Person, schema:Corporation, schema:GeoShape, schema:CreativeWork, schema:Article, schema:NewsArticle, schema:UserComments, schema:AudioObject and schema:VideoObject.schema:PostalAddress.W3C is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. It is not incorporated. Member organizations and invited experts from the public produce most of W3C’s deliverables. Invited experts do not pay fees. It follows a consensus-based process.
Among the deliverables of the Goverment Linked Data (GLD) Working Group, only its Organization ontology is relevant to this project; the Registered Organization Vocabulary and Asset Description Metadata Schema (ADMS) are not. Anyone may send comments to the public mailing list.
Deliverables of past working groups of interest are the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS), RDF Schema, Web Ontology Language (OWL) and Representing Content in RDF.
org:Organization has no properties for dissolution dates.org:Organization uses skos:altLabel for alternate names instead of foaf:nick.org:Organization uses org:hasSubOrganization, org:subOrganizationOf and org:transitiveSubOrganizationOf.skos:prefLabel, skos:altLabel and skos:hiddenLabel are sub-properties of and are preferred to rdfs:label.skos:notation and the documentation properties skos:note and skos:definition are available for general use.rdfs:seeAlso can be used like the href attribute in HTML to form a generic link between resources.owl:sameAs can be used to link to an RDF document describing the same resource.dcterms, foaf and vcard discussed here, and Good Relations.foaf:Agent and foaf:Person in the domains and ranges of properties. Also:
org:Organization is equivalent to foaf:Organization.org:hasMember is equivalent to foaf:member.org:Organization is a subclass of foaf:Agent, like foaf:Person and foaf:Organization.IETF is a volunteer-run Internet standards organization. It cooperates closely with the W3C, ISO and IEC standards bodies. Its RFC 6350 (vCard 4.0), RFC 4519 and RFC 4524 (LDAP) are of interest. IANA maintains a registry of vCard elements. An RDF encoding of vCard 4.0 exists.
ldap:jpegPhoto and RFC 6474 adds vcard:birthPlace, vcard:deathPlace and vcard:deathDate.vcard:Organization has no properties for identifiers, classifications or parent organizations.vcard:Person to a vcard:Organization.The European Commission’s Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations (ISA) programme completed three vocabularies. Its Business Core Vocabulary evolved into the W3C Registered Organization Vocabulary. The Person Core Vocabulary and Location Core Vocabulary are now in W3C namespaces.
person:patronymicName is unique to this vocabulary and solves an internationalization issue.person:birthName covers one type of former name.locn:Address has no property for address types or telephone numbers.locn:Address is INSPIRE conformant.adms, dcterms, foaf, schema and skos mentioned here, including foaf:Person, foaf:name, foaf:givenName, foaf:familyName, schema:Place, schema:Person, schema:gender, schema:birthDate and schema:deathDate.schema:additionalName, schema:honorificSuffix, foaf:nick, foaf:mbox, schema:image, foaf:img and foaf:page.dcterms.OASIS is a not-for-profit consortium that develops open standards for information technology. It is a member-run organization. The public may participate by sending comments. Its LegalXML Member Section is very active, its eGov Member Section less so.
Its OASIS Customer Information Quality (CIQ) defines an extensible Name Language (xNL), extensible Address Language (xAL), extensible Party Information Language (xPIL) and extensible Party Relationships Language (xPRL) of interest to this project.
givenName and familyName are insufficient.xPIL.xsd defines ElectronicAddressIdentifier for emails, PersonInfo/Gender for genders, BirthInfo/BirthDateTime for birth dates, Events/Event for death dates and FreeTextLines for biographies.xPIL.xsd defines Identifier for identifiers, OrganisationInfo/Type, OrganisationInfo/CategoryType and OrganisationInfo/Nature for classifications, Relationship for parent organizations, and Events/Event for founding dates and dissolution dates.Memberships, but no class for posts. xPRL defines Relationship/RelationshipRole.NIEM was initiated as a joint venture between the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Justice with outreach to other departments and agencies. Its goal is to allow for national-level interoperable information sharing and data exchange. Several specializations of the NIEM Core schema exist.
OMG is an international organization that establishes industry guidelines and specifications to ensure the reusability, portability, and interoperability of object-based software in different environments. Its Party Management Facility (PMF) specification is of interest.
OpenSocial non-RDF defines an open social application platform. LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Orkut and hi5 were early adopters after its launch in 2007. It is now independent from Google, and is increasing adoption among domain-specific social networks and enterprise vendors.
opensocial:Person has no property for death dates.opensocial:Organization is more like org:Membership than org:Organization.An apparently abandoned project of the Open Semantic Collaboration Architecture Foundation. Its Personal Information Model (PIMO) Ontology has no properties for names, emails, genders, birth dates, death dates or external links. Its NEPOMUK Contact Ontology (NCO), on the other hand, is of interest.
dcterms properties and reuses other NEPOMUK ontologies.The BIO vocabulary adds properties for biographical information like bio:biography and bio:olb to foaf:Agent and foaf:Person.
The following vocabularies have inspired or been adopted by the above:
The following vocabularies have not seen widepread adoption beyond their authors:
User has no properties for honorific prefixes, honorific suffixes, alternate names, death dates or external links.participation:Role class is a cross between org:Membership and org:Role.org:classification or org:identifier.Entity class and an identifier property for organizations.The following are not appropriate to the scope of this project:
The following were not reviewed and are likely inappropriate:
This project may consider publishing mappings to DBPedia and Freebase classes and properties.