Scientific publisher Nature Publishing Group (NPG), UK, has joined the linked data community by opening up access to its publication data via a linked data platform. NPG's Linked Data Platform is available at http://data.nature.com.
The platform includes more than 20 million Resource Description Framework (RDF) statements, including primary metadata for more than 450,000 articles published by NPG since 1869. In this first release, the datasets include basic citation information (title, author, publication date, etc) as well as NPG specific ontologies. These datasets are being released under an open metadata license, Creative Commons Zero (CC0), which permits maximal use/re-use of this data.
NPG's platform allows for easy querying, exploration and extraction of data and relationships about articles, contributors, publications, and subjects. Users can run web-standard SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language (SPARQL) queries to obtain and manipulate data stored as RDF. The platform uses standard vocabularies such as Dublin Core, FOAF, PRISM, BIBO and OWL, and the data is integrated with existing public datasets including CrossRef and PubMed.
Linked data refers to the publishing of structured data that is linked to other related data. It allows users to query, explore and link data from datasets across the web. NPG joins governments from around the world and other organisations including the British Library, the New York Times and the Open University, in providing a linked data platform.
The platform complements other services NPG provides for developers, but incorporates a wider audience. It has been built in collaboration with information and publishing solutions specialist The Stationery Office (TSO) to support scaling.
