• Are you a government or government-related organization (administration, research center, agency, …) and in possession of large amounts of data?
• Is your organization obliged to publish data?
• Do you have valuable data but lack the financial or technical means to distribute it?
• Are you convinced that linking, merging or mapping your data with other data sources will increase its value?
• Do you face inter-organizational data integration challenges?
• Do you want or need your data to be re-used?
• Do you already publish tons of data in HTML, spreadsheets, PDFs or proprietary formats?

• Is the basis for data integration/mapping/linking on the Internet.
• Puts you in pole position for data publishing.
• Empowers the world around you.
• Is the ultimate extension of your role as knowledge center, regulator, publisher.
• Guarantees a huge leap forward in your data distribution strategy without any risks.

What

PUBLINK does for you.

• PUBLINK RDF: Linked Data at its core is in fact nothing more than the data published as RDF and then linked to each other.
• PUBLINK SPARQL endpoint: SPARQL is the query language for RDF data, like SQL for relational data bases.
  To query an RDF Store, a SPARQL endpoint is needed. This is the gateway to the RDF Store through which queries are executed. The web service accepts other formats as well and transforms them into SPARQL.
  The SPARQL endpoint provides a means for machine-to-machine communication so that the public presence of data can be fully exploited, and foresees the needs of future web applications.
  Here are examples of existing SPARQL endpoints: http://esw.w3.org/topic/SparqlEndpoints
• PUBLINK tool: You are developing a tool for Linked Data (or RDF) extraction, publishing, visualization, exploration or consumption? The LOD2 Stack is a integrated set of tools covering the whole life-cycle of Linked Data and we welcome 3rd party contributions. Since the LOD2 Stack is based on the popular Debian software packaging system, tools being integrated with the LOD2 Stack are extremly easy to deploy and use. The main requirement for a tool to become part of the LOD2 Stack is that it produces and/or consumes RDF, which can be obtained or stored in a common SPARQL endpoint (Virtuoso is primarily used in the LOD2 Stack for that purpose). In this variant of PUBLINK we will support you with creating a Debian package of your tool and integating it with other components of the stack (cf. also our HOWTO Contribute).

• Government administrations or agencies, regional, national or European
• Knowledge center (health, infrastructure, chemical, tax, financial, social, economic, biological, education, labour, …)
• Bureau for statistics
• Research centers
• Enterprises aiming to publish Linked Open Data
• RDF tool developers

Examples of Completed Publink Projects

• In 2010 the European Commission Directorate General CONNECT learned how to translate a PDF document with performance indicators into a linked open data graphical environment on the web for the Digital Agenda Scoreboard.
• In 2011 the Statistical Office of Serbia learned how to transform their data into RDF and understood the value of the Datacube standard for statistical information.
• In 2011 the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations learned how to manage equivalent entities.

And many more organizations have been supported by the LOD2 consortium. Don't you also want to tap into the knowledge, experience and expertise of this dynamic and pragmatic research consortium?

to send an application.

• Brief profile of your organization
• Description of the data (quality, quantity, current format) or tool (purpose, technology, interfaces) you aim to publish
• Potential stakeholders benefiting from publishing your data or tool
• Envisioned involvement from your side – will you designate staff for supporting the PUBLINK project and being responsible for the maintenance of the data when the PUBLINK project will have terminated
• Envisioned licensing model (in general PUBLINK is aimed at publishing under open licenses, see http://opendefinition.org)

Timeline

• Application deadline:                   December 31st, 2012
• Notification of acceptance:         January 30th, 2013
• PUBLINK pathfinder period:    February & March 2013
• PUBLINK kickstart period:          April till June 2013

What is Linked Open Data?

The Internet previously was merely a virtual library where documents were linked to each other, it was a web of documents for humans to read. The W3C-hosted Linking Open Data initiative (LOD, http://esw.w3.org/SweoIG/TaskForces/CommunityProjects/LinkingOpenData) now extended the ‘web of documents’ with a ‘web of data’ by publishing and interlinking open data sources on the Web based on well-established standards such as RDF and URIs. 

A web comprising linked data in addition to linked documents brings the advantage that the content becomes machine-readable. Computer and software can interpret the meaning of web content instead of just offering it to the user to read. As a result, more intelligent search engines (cf. schema.org or Google's knowledge graph) can combine information from different sources, mash-ups integrating heterogeneous information can be more easily built and many more, currently unforeseen creative uses of information on the web become possible.