The Case for a Common, Reusable Knowledge Graph Infrastructure for NFDI

Abstract

The Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) of the European Commission identifies Knowledge Graphs (KGs) as one of the most important technologies for building an interoperability framework and enabling data exchange among users across countries, sectors, and disciplines [1]. KG is a graph-structured knowledge base containing a terminology (vocabulary or ontology) and data entities interrelated via the terminology [2]. KGs are based on semantic web technologies (RDF, SPARQL, etc.) and often used for agile data integration. KGs also play an essential role within Germany as a vehicle to connect research data and research-related entities and make those accessible – examples include the GESIS Knowledge Graph Infrastructure, TIB Open Research Knowledge Graph, and GND.network. Furthermore, the Wikidata knowledge graph, maintained by Wikimedia Germany, contains a large number of research-related entities and is widely used in scientific knowledge management in addition to being an important advocacy tool for open data [3]. Extending domain-specific ontology-supported KGs with the multidisciplinary, crowdsourced knowledge in Wikidata KG would enable significant applications. The linking between expert knowledge systems and world knowledge empowers lay persons to benefit from high-quality research data and ultimately contributes to increasing confidence in scientific research in society.