Investigations into a Semantic Web for Science

The idea of a Science Data Web that exploits the technologies and techniques of the Semantic has been long held. Most recently the Concept Web Alliance has argued for a semantic web for biological data, and Bio2RDF makes up over a third of the current Linked Open Data Cloud (URL). But many challenges remain: what is the relationship between event and observation? How can RDF be used to break down and combine complex spreadsheet data (the most favoured form of data representation by experimental scientists)? How are experiments best combined into research objects and how do we cite these? The research will take place in the context of several research eLaboratories being developed and deployed in Manchester, notably SysMO-SEEK for systems biology and MethodBox for statistical methods in epidemiology. The research will be in the underpinning practices of the Semantic Web driven by real world examples and exposure to working scientists.