{"id":3456,"date":"2017-03-20T11:09:15","date_gmt":"2017-03-20T10:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordlift.io\/?post_type=entity&p=3456"},"modified":"2019-10-28T12:42:19","modified_gmt":"2019-10-28T11:42:19","slug":"semantic-publishing","status":"publish","type":"entity","link":"https:\/\/wordlift.io\/blog\/en\/entity\/semantic-publishing\/","title":{"rendered":"Semantic Publishing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Semantic publishing<\/b>\u00a0or dynamic\u00a0<\/strong>semantic<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>publishing<\/b>, refers to\u00a0publishing<\/b>\u00a0online documents along with the linked metadata<\/strong> that describe them<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Adding machine-readable metadata<\/strong> helps crawlers and software agents\u00a0to understand the meaning<\/strong>, structure<\/strong>, and context<\/strong> of a piece of information.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What is Semantic Publishing?<\/h2>\n

It was back in 2001 when Tim Berners-Lee<\/a> in\u00a0a publication of Scientific American<\/a>\u00a0that later became a milestone for the Web industry first introduced the term\u00a0Semantic Web.<\/p>\n

The Semantic Web<\/a> will bring structure to the meaningful content of Web pages<\/strong>, creating an environment where software agents roaming from page to page can readily carry out sophisticated tasks for users […..].\u00a0The Semantic Web is not a separate Web but an extension of the current one<\/strong>, in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The limitations of the Web as a collection of\u00a0documents and links\u00a0have been well known for quite some time.<\/p>\n

Way before the WWW was born – back in 1960 – a visionary called Ted Nelson introduced\u00a0the idea of a\u00a0“digital repository scheme for worldwide electronic publishing<\/strong><\/span>“. Nelson\u00a0introduced a machine-language program which would store and display documents, together with the ability to perform edits.<\/p>\n

When in the 80s Berners-Lee began structuring the WWW as we know it today, a rivalry emerged: Nelson had a strong and justified reaction when Wired magazine published in 1995 a controversial article titled “The Curse of Xanadu”. <\/span><\/p>\n

Now – without getting into too many details – one of the differences between WWW and Xanadu, the system that Nelson envisioned, is that information from one document can be embedded into another document<\/strong><\/span> (a mechanism known as “transclusion”) with explicit permission given by the author of the document. This mechanism of sharing information in a consistent way between parties was lost with the implementation of hyperlinks and HTML<\/a> web pages that we use today.<\/p>\n

Web pages have been originally designed to display information for humans<\/strong> and had little or no information to help machines process, sift and organize this information. Hyperlinks also have been originally conceived as free pathways<\/strong> from one document to the other without requiring any specific logic and\/or approval by the linked party as it was with Xanadu’s transclusions. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Semantic Web addresses these concerns and extends the World Wide Web by\u00a0making information machine-readable<\/strong>, specifying\u00a0provenance and allowing software agents to automatically accomplish complex tasks\u00a0such as text mining, categorization, and search. The linked metadata introduced by semantic web technologies also helps search engines understand the content being indexed and provide more accurate results to their end-users.<\/p>\n

Hyperlinks are an essential feature of the World Wide Web<\/a> but provide no meaning on why two pages are connected. A machine when analyzing a\u00a0hyperlink can only see that the first page is promoting the second one and is using a specific keyword to enable the link. There is no way that the machine can grasp why that link was created and by whom. The Web is a large graph of connected pages made of unspecified links<\/strong><\/span>.<\/p>\n

\"Current<\/p>\n

In the Semantic Web each node has a unique identifier and the relationship with the other nodes helps computers\u00a0understand the meaning and the structure of the content. In semantic web publishing, the nodes are represented by core concepts or entities that are unambiguously connected\u00a0with shared definitions<\/strong>, accessible to everyone on the Internet. <\/span><\/p>\n

Wait a second where is this information stored?<\/em> <\/span><\/p>\n

Entities are stored publicly on the Web\u00a0using a set of <\/strong>best practices<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0<\/em>for publishing and connecting structured data\u00a0known as linked data<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/em>Linked data<\/a> entitles several techniques\u00a0to help machine analyze\u00a0content, index it and fetch answers back to users. In semantic publishing, the metadata describing an article is stored using linked data. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Why large media companies invest in Semantic Publishing?<\/h2>\n

It has been quite some time since large online publishers have begun advocating semantic publishing.\u00a0Web publishing is going through a significant transformation and the driving forces of this transformation are:<\/p>\n