The KNOT Data Model - Overview
A guideline for the description of digital scholarly activity and objects as cultural heritage using a common vocabulary and facilitating the dissemination of good practices.
KNOT-DM is used to describe the KNOT project’s data, based on the focus of the project's investigation which argues for digital scholarly objects as digital forms that represent a unique and interesting example of the digital cultural heritage (DCH) of Italian universities (see the Pilot page for more). The data model is focused on the intersection of three domains — academia, public data, and digital cultural heritage — that represent specific aspects of this argument.
The goal of the KNOT-DM is to facilitate the description of digital scholarly activity and objects as examples of DCH as well as foster interconnection with existing systems that already document this activity and these objects, such as repositories (both institutional and public) and dedicated websites, to avoid the duplication of existing data and information. The data model is organized into three interconnected segments, each reflecting one of the domains and using an internationally recognised standard, that deal with entities, activities, agents, themes, relationships, and spatio-temporal information. Metadata created with KNOT-DM forms the basis of the knowledge graph used in the KNOT catalogue.
The Venn diagrams below summarize the domain intersection KNOT-DM is based on as well as the equivalent standards it uses. See the Structure section for more details on how the data model integrates each standard.
KNOT-DM is intended to be flexible and reusable, in order to accommodate its potential integration into the Digital Library infrastructure as well as connection to existing systems. As such it is composed of complementary concepts from existing, internationally recognized standards. It is freely available for universities, and other interested parties, to use to model their own data for independent usage or to allow its inclusion within the KNOT pilot project.
KNOT-DM allows the following information to be recorded:
- Research project activity — who, what, where, when, and how.
- Research project outputs — the scholarly digital objects created by research project activities.
- The data model is intended to be flexible enough to enable the description of various objects such as software, websites, web services, and data collections.
- Research project inputs — the entities that are used by a research project such as physical items, people, places, and themes.
- Agents — involved in research projects and the creation of outputs as contributors and publishers, from the individual to the organization via organizational units (such as departments or laboratories) and their locations.
- Relationships — between activities, agents, entities, and locations, such as the influence of external concepts or the reuse of digital scholarly objects between projects.
- Spatial and temporal information — including that of the projects but also that recorded in digital scholarly objects, such as for example the places mentioned in a text or the time period covered by the data.
- Concepts — such as the type of objects produced, the technologies used, the research activities, the technical specifications, the academic disciplines involved, and the subjects of research. These concepts are described using a selection of controlled vocabularies and authority controls.
The figure below summarizes the workflow of the KNOT-DM, in line with the goals of the first year of the project.
Structure
Learn more about the different segments that make up the KNOT-DM.
Modules
Learn more about how to use the different modules within KNOT-DM.
Ontology
Learn more about the KNOT Ontology, which expresses the data model in RDF.
Controlled Vocabularies
Learn more about the Controlled Vocabularies used in KNOT-DM, including those created specifically for the project.