The Semantic Web Conference ontology (SWC) is an ontology for describing academic conferences. It was initially designed to support the European Semantic Web Conference, ESWC2007, and later extended for both the following conferences in the ESWC series, as well as in the ISWC series. Historically, the SWC ontology also draws heavily on ontologies developed for ESWC2006 and ISWC2006. SWC is mainly a convention of how to use classes and properties from other ontologies, most prominently FOAF (for people) and SWRC (their BibTeX elements, for the papers). We are also throwing in some SIOC, Dublin Core and iCal/RDF Calendar. Our own swc namespace provides the glue for all this, as well as specialised classes for things that have to do with conferences. This version of SWC has been slimmed down significantly (hence the revision name). A total of 59 classes and 19 properties have been deprecated (deprecated terms can be found at the bottom of this document). This was mostly done with the intention to remove the countless sub-classes of generic classes such as Chair or SessionEvent, which were deemed to be too specific for a general-purpose conference ontology such as SWC. Elsewhere, classes and properties which had never been used and seemed to fall under the heading of "over-engineering" were removed. Finally, all CfP related terms were removed. Instead, we suggest to use a dedicated ontology such as the CfP ontology.
For the basic use case of describing papers, the figure below shows how the main kinds of resources are connected: the paper itself, the authors and their affiliations, and the talk where the paper was presented. The next figure shows in more detail the kinds of things that can be said about each of the four main entities surrounding a paper.
One of the basic design choices in SWC is to use role modelling for describing the different functions at a conference, such as chairs, reviewers, etc. For any particular role at a given conference, the swc:Role class or a sub-class will be instantiated. This role instance stands in relation to a person (who plays the role) and an event. The figure below gives an example showing how to model the role of the metadata chair (or "dog food tsar") at ISWC+ASWC2007, which was held by Knud Möller (together with Tom Heath, not shown in the figure). Note that the metadata chair role is not modelled with its own dedicated class (although it could have been). Instead, an instance of the generic Chair class is used and labelled accordingly.
Copyright © 2007-2009 Knud Möller, Sean Bechhofer and Tom Heath. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. This copyright applies to the Semantic Web Conference Ontology (SWC) Specification and accompanying documentation in RDF. Regarding underlying technology, SWC uses W3C's RDF technology, an open Web standard that can be freely used by anyone.
An argumentative document is a document which uses analytical reasoning and evidence in order to argue for a point of view. Typical examples are scientific papers or political pamphlets. Negative examples are novels or plays (even though a novel might also try to sway the reader to a certain point of view). According to Text Types, an argumentative document is based "on the evaluation and the subsequent subjective judgement in answer to a problem. It refers to the reasons advanced for or against a matter".
Artefact here means a document which can have a physical manifestation, like a paper or the proceedings of a conference.
A scientific/scholarly paper, e.g., an article in a scientific journal, or a paper at a conference or workshop. A paper could also be unpublished formally, as long as it has the form of a scientific paper (introduction, conclusion, related work, etc.).
A scientific poster at a conference or workshop.
A set of slides used for a presentation of e.g. a paper at a conference.
The proceedings of a conference or workshop, which contain the papers presented there.
A document containing the programme of an event such as a conference or workshop. Typically, the programme would list the times and dates for the individual sub-events, e.g., talks, dinners, panel discussions, etc.
An event in time and space which is planned and organised, as opposed to something which 'just happens', such as a car accident or sunset.
Academic events are e.g. conferences and conference-like events, and all the sub-events of those which are about the topic or theme of the conference, such as talks or panels.
A panel discussion at a conference or conference-like event, usually involving several speakers.
A scientific conference. TODO: Maybe this should be opened up - why only scientific conferences?
A scientific workshop. Workshops are often co-located with ConferenceEvents.
A tutorial is a special session at a conference or workshop, somewhat like a long lecture on a specific topic.
A track groups all those sessions or events at a conference or workshop that belong to a common, overall theme. Depending on the conference, tracks can be quite generic, such as "Research" or "Industrial", but can also be more specific, such as "Semantic Web" or "Numismatics". SWC does not define any specific tracks, since conferences often differ so much with respect to how they structure their tracks, that it would be pointless to try and find a set of tracks that would suit all conferences. Sub-classes of TrackEvent which were defined in previous versions of the SWC ontology are now deprecated.
A session dedicated to a specific topic at a conference. This could be a session with talks, or also a poster session, a demo session, or any other kind of session.
A speaker giving a talk. This could be the presentation of a paper, but also keynote speech or any other kind of talk.
In the context of SWC, a non-academic event is any kind or organised event which does not concern the topic or theme of the conference as such. Examples are breaks, dinners, parties, etc.
Any kind of break at the super-event, such as a coffee break.
Examples for social events are parties or excursions.
A lunch, dinner or similar event at a conference or conference-like event.
The location of a conference or conference-like event. Ideally, this would be more specific than just the city. Instead it should be the hotel, convention centre, university or similar place where the event is held.
A particular room at the conference venue (or elsewhere). E.g., the room where a particular SessionEvent takes place.
A location at the conference venue (or elsewhere), which is not a meeting room.
A hotel, hostel, BnB or similar.
Role is the super-class of all the different roles performed at a conference or workshop. Examples are the various conference chairs, the delegates, presenters, PC members, etc. The intended use of this class is that an instance of Role will be related to the event at which it is performed, and to the person which performs it. Since the set of roles is slightly different for each event, and since it would therefore be impossible to provide sub-classes for all needs and circumstances, the SWC ontology only contains a very basic set of Role classes. Rather than diversifying the set of Role classes to cater for all needs, users should instead instantiate the small set of different Role classes and cover the roles at a specific event in this way. E.g., instead of sub-classing the Chair role with MainChair, WorkshopChair, TutorialChair, etc., the different kinds of chairs should simply be instances of the generic Chair class and be labelled appropriately.
A sub-class of Role for various kinds of chair functions. Examples are the main chair of a conference, the tutorials chair, the proceedings chair, etc. Instead of introducing a large amount of sub-classes of Chair, we suggest to model all the different chair functions as instances of Chair with appropriate labels.
A delegate is someone who attends a conference or conference-like event.
A presenter is someone who presents matter in front of an audience. Examples of events to which this role applies are paper presentations, tutorials, or talks. A keynote speaker could also be modelled as an instance of this class.
This role is played by the members of the programme committee of a conference or conference-like event. We found this role to be so significant that it justifies to be represented by its own class.
Relates a document to an event such as a conference, workshop, etc.
Relates an event such as a conference, workshop, etc. to a document.
Events can be sub-events of other events. E.g., a talk can be a sub-event of a session, which in turn can be a sub-event of a conference. The relation is transitive - the talk is also a sub-event of the conference.
Events can be super-events of other events. E.g., a conference can be the super-event of a session, which in turn can be the super-event of a talk. The relation is transitive - the conference is also the super-event of the talk.
FOAF does not define an inverse of foaf:member, so SWC does it.
Relates an event such as a conference or any sub-event thereof to a location where it takes place.
Relates an event such as a conference to its Programme.
A person might plan to attend a talk or session at a conference or similar event. This property could be used to prepare a delegate's conference experience with respect to who they want to meet, etc.
Part of the role modelling machinery of SWC. This property relates an event (e.g. a conference) to a role at the event (e.g. a conference chair).
Relates an event such as a conference, workshop, etc. to a physical artefact.
Relates a location to a conference or sub-event thereof which takes place at it.
Part of the role modelling machinery of SWC. This property relates a role at an event (e.g. a conference chair) to the event (e.g. a conference).
Part of the role modelling machinery of SWC. This property relates a role at an event (e.g. a conference chair) to the person who actually holds the role.
Part of the role modelling machinery of SWC. This property relates a person to the role (e.g. a conference chair) it holds at an event.
A generic property to model part-of relationships. In SWC this property is used to relate a proceedings document to the papers and articles contained in it.
A generic property to model part-of relationships. In SWC this property is used to relate papers or articles to the proceedings document in which they are contained.
The chair of a particular track of a conference, responsible for all submissions and actions regarding this track.
Deprecating this, just use TrackChair instead.
PhD Symposium or Doctoral Consortium Chair
A role that is only relevant in relation to the topic of the conference e.g. Semantic Web Technologies Coordinator at a Semantic Web Conference.
Deprecating this, just use Presenter instead.
Deprecating this, just use ProgrammeCommitteeMember instead.
A type of paper which is mainly describes the properties, implementation or architecture of an system (such as a software system). Deprecating this: it's too specific for, not generic enough to apply for most conferences.
Deprecating this - we can just as well use TalkEvent.
Deprecating this - we can just as well use TrackEvent.
Deprecating this - we can just as well use SessionEvent.
Deprecating this - we can just use TalkEvent.
Deprecating this - we can just use BreakEvent.
Deprecating this - we can just use SocialEvent.
As opposed to a peer-reviewed paper. This class has been deprecated in order to reduce the inflation of classes.
A type of paper which accompanies the demonstration of software, also known as an extended abstract or demo description. This class has been deprecated in order to reduce the inflation of classes; it is too specific for CS conferences.
The call classes have been deprecated in SWC. Instead, we suggest to use the CfP ontology. A call is a public announcement, asking for contribution of some kind to events such as conferences or workshops, or to a publication such as a journal or book.
This kind of call usually calls for potential delegates to attend an event such as a conference or a workshop.
A call which asks for contributions in the form of e.g. workshop or tutorial proposals.
A call for papers or CfP encourages authors to submit papers for peer-review for a conference or workshop, or a journal or book.
A call for scientific posters at a conference or workshop. Submissions are usually in the form of extended abstracts (~2 page) discussing the research presented on the poster.
A call for demonstrations of software at a conference or workshop. Submissions are usually in the form of extended abstracts (~2 page) discussing the research questions addressed by the software and outlining the content of the demonstration.
Deprecated because it has never been used and in order to reduce the inflation of ontology terms.
The call classes have been deprecated in SWC. Instead, we suggest to use the CfP ontology.
Instead of this property, use the Delegate role.
Deprecated, instead using terms from FOAF.
Instead of this property, use foaf:topic.
Deprecated to reduce inflation of terms.
Deprecated: no real need to have an internal super-class for locations, we can just use the SpatialThing.