The *Bibliographic Reference Ontology* (*BiRO*) allows the description of reference lists and bibliographic references themselves. In particular, BiRO uses an [OWL-based definition of the FRBR model](/ontologies/frbr) to define bibliographic references and their compilation into ordered bibliographic lists, by means of the [Collections Ontology](http://purl.org/co), as shown in the following figure. <img class="img-responsive center-block" src="/static/img/spar/biro-diagram.png" alt="A Graffoo diagram introducing the Bibliographic Reference Ontology." /> An individual bibliographic reference, such as one in the reference list of a published journal article, may exhibit varying degrees of incompleteness, depending on the formatting rules of the journal. For example, it may lack the title of the cited article, the full names of the listed authors, or indeed a full listing of the authors. BiRO provides a logical system for relating such incomplete bibliographic reference to: * the full bibliographic record for that cited article (``biro:BibliographicRecord``), which, in addition to any author and title fields missing from the reference (``biro:BibliographicReference``), may also be expected to include the name of the publisher, and the ISSN or ISBN of the publication; * collections of bibliographic records (``biro:BibliographicCollection``), such as library catalogues (``biro:LibraryCatalogue``); * ordered bibliographic lists (``biro:BibliographicList``), such as reference lists (``biro:ReferenceList``).
The paper entitled "[Intertextual semantics: A semantics for information design](http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.21134)" contains a list of references, each of them referring to a particular published article. For instance, the content of a particular bibliographic reference contained in that list, and referring to the paper "[Towards a semantics for XML markup](http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/585058.585081)", is: > Renear, A., Dubin, D. & Sperberg-McQueen, C.M. (2002). Towards a semantics for XML markup. In E. Mudson (Chair), Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Document Engineering, (pp. 119-126). New York: ACM Press. A first necessary step to release bibliographic references like the above one in RDF by using [BiRO](/ontologies/biro) is to describe the list where they are contained (``biro:ReferenceList``), and the particular order in which they are (by means of the [Collections Ontology](http://purl.org/co) class ``co:List`` and its related properties). In addition, we should also make explicit the link between each of the references in the list and the actual cited articles they refer to, by means of the object property ``biro:references``.
@prefix : <http://www.sparontologies.net/example/> .
@prefix biro: <http://purl.org/spar/biro/> .
@prefix co: <http://purl.org/co/> .
@prefix dcterms: <http://purl.org/dc/terms/> .
@prefix frbr: <http://purl.org/vocab/frbr/core#> .
<http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.21134>
frbr:part :reference-list .
:reference-list a biro:ReferenceList ;
co:firstItem :reference-1 ;
co:item
:reference-1 ,
:reference-2 ,
:reference-3 ,
# ...
:reference-i ,
:reference-j ,
# ...
:reference-n ;
co:lastItem
:reference-n .
:reference-1 a co:ListItem ;
co:itemContent :barwise83 ;
co:nextItem :reference-2 .
:reference-2 a co:ListItem ;
co:itemContent :black37 ;
co:nextItem :reference-3 .
# ...
:reference-i a co:ListItem ;
co:itemContent :renear02 ;
co:nextItem :reference-j .
# ...
:renear02 a biro:BibliographicReference ;
dcterms:bibliographicCitation
"Renear, A., Dubin, D. & Sperberg-McQueen,
C.M. (2002). Towards a semantics for XML markup.
In E. Mudson (Chair), Proceedings of the ACM
Symposium on Document Engineering, (pp. 119-126).
New York: ACM Press." ;
biro:references <http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/585058.585081> .Please cite the source above with the following reference:
Peroni, Silvio (2015): Example of use of BiRO #1. figshare. http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1534592The source introduced in the [first BiRO example](#biro_1) is not fully expressive as we only assigned an IRI to the reference list and to each of its references, and the semantics of the string representing the reference is still obscure. For instance, there is no explicit statement saying that the strings "Renear, A.", "2002" and "Towards a semantics for XML markup" are, respectively, the name of one of the authors, the year of publication and the title of the article. A way to enable the semantic enhancement of strings, and to solve the above mentioned limitations, is to use literals as subjects of statements and assertions, by promoting them as "first class object" in OWL. The pattern [literal reification](http://www.essepuntato.it/2010/06/literalreification) fulfills this scenario by reifying literals as proper individuals of the class ``literal:Literal``. Individuals of this class express literal values through the functional data property ``literal:hasLiteralValue`` and can be connected to other individuals that share the same literal value by using the property ``literal:hasSameLiteralValueAs``. Moreover, a literal may refer to, and may be referred by, any OWL individual through ``literal:isLiteralOf`` and ``literal:hasLiteral`` respectively. This pattern allows one to describe each string of a bibliographic reference as item of an ordered list of strings, by means of the [Collections Ontology](http://purl.org/co). By means of this pattern and of the OWL 2 capabilities in meta-modelling, it becomes possible to link specific strings in the references as defined with [BiRO](/ontologies/biro) and to enhance them through semantic assertions according to specific vocabularies.
@prefix : <http://www.sparontologies.net/example/> .
@prefix biro: <http://purl.org/spar/biro/> .
@prefix co: <http://purl.org/co/> .
@prefix foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/> .
@prefix literal: <http://www.essepuntato.it/2010/06/literalreification/> .
:renear02 a biro:BibliographicReference ;
co:firstItem :author-name-1 ;
co:item
:author-name-1 ,
:author-name-2 ,
:year-1 ,
:title-1 ,
# ...
:publisher-name-1 ;
co:lastItem :publisher-name-1 .
:author-name-1 a co:ListItem ;
co:itemContent :first-author-name ;
co:nextItem :author-name-2 .
# ...
:year-1 a co:ListItem ;
co:itemContent :publication-year ;
co:nextItem :title-1 .
:title-1 a co:ListItem ;
co:itemContent :paper-title ;
co:nextItem :editor-name-1 .
# ...
:first-author-name a literal:Literal , foaf:name ;
literal:hasLiteralValue "Renear, A." ;
literal:isLiteralOf :renear .
:renear a foaf:Person ;
foaf:givenName "Allen" ;
foaf:familyName "Renear" .Please cite the source above with the following reference:
Peroni, Silvio (2015): Example of use of BiRO #2. figshare. http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1534651Another approach, alternative to the one presented in the [second BiRO example](#biro_2), to deal with the semantic enhancement of bibliographic references is to use [EARMARK](http://www.essepuntato.it/2008/12/earmark) ranges for associating appropriate semantic statements to textual fragments, as illustrated in the following paper: <p class="cite bg-info">Peroni, S., Gangemi, A., & Vitali, F. (2011). Dealing with markup semantics. In Proceedings the 7th International Conference on Semantic Systems (i-Semantics 2011): 111–118. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2063518.2063533</p> For instance, the reference introduced in the [first BiRO example](#biro_1) can be encoded as an EARMARK document. We first need a particular string container called docuverse in EARMARK (corresponding to the class ``earmark:StringDocuverse``). This entity allows one to define the text of the reference. Then, we can define ranges (the class ``earmark:PointerRange``) for each string we want to use in order to describe the bibliographic reference according to [BiRO](/ontologies/biro). Furthermore, using the [LA-EARMARK](http://www.essepuntato.it/2013/06/la-earmark), and extension of EARMARK for expressing markup semantics, it is possible to link EARMARK ranges to their formal meaning and to the particular object referenced by such strings, as described in the following work: <p class="cite bg-info">Barabucci, G., Di Iorio, A., Peroni, S., Poggi, F., & Vitali, F. (2013). Annotations with EARMARK in practice: a fairy tale. In Proceedings of DH-CASE 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2517978.2517990</p> We can say that a certain range (i.e., a string) actually denotes (``la:denotes``) a particular concrete object, i.e., a particular person identified by a certain IRI. Specifically, that range expresses (``la:expresses``) a particular meaning (``la:Meaning``), i.e., the fact that the string (as well as the denoted object) refers to something being an author of that paper.
@prefix : <http://www.sparontologies.net/example/> .
@prefix biro: <http://purl.org/spar/biro/> .
@prefix co: <http://purl.org/co/> .
@prefix earmark: <http://www.essepuntato.it/2008/12/earmark#> .
@prefix foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/> .
@prefix la: <http://www.ontologydesignpatterns.org/cp/owl/semiotics.owl#> .
@prefix owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#> .
@prefix pro: <http://purl.org/spar/pro/> .
@prefix xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .
:renear02-reference a earmark:StringDocuverse ;
earmark:hasContent
"Renear, A., Dubin, D. & Sperberg-McQueen,
C.M. (2002). Towards a semantics for XML markup.
In E. Mudson (Chair), Proceedings of the ACM
Symposium on Document Engineering, (pp. 119-126).
New York: ACM Press." .
:renear02 a biro:BibliographicReference ;
co:firstItem :author-name-1 ;
co:item
:author-name-1 ,
:author-name-2 ,
:year-1 ,
:title-1 ,
# ...
:publisher-name-1 ;
co:lastItem :publisher-name-1 .
:author-name-1 a co:ListItem ;
co:itemContent :first-author-name ;
co:nextItem :author-name-2 .
# ...
:year-1 a co:ListItem ;
co:itemContent :publication-year ;
co:nextItem :title-1 .
:title-1 a co:ListItem ;
co:itemContent :paper-title ;
co:nextItem :editor-name-1 .
# ...
# It identifies the string "Renear, A."
:first-author-name a earmark:PointerRange ;
earmark:refersTo :renear02-reference ;
earmark:begins "0"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger ;
earmark:ends "9"^^xsd:nonNegativeInteger .
# ...
:first-author-name
la:denotes :renear ;
la:expresses
[
a owl:Restriction ;
owl:onProperty pro:holdsRoleInTime ;
owl:someValuesFrom [
owl:intersectionOf (
[
a owl:Restriction ;
owl:onProperty pro:withRole ;
owl:hasValue pro:author ]
[
a owl:Restriction ;
owl:onProperty pro:refersToDocument ;
owl:hasValue :towards-a-semantics ] ) ] ] .
:renear a foaf:Person ;
foaf:givenName "Allen" ;
foaf:familyName "Renear" .Please cite the source above with the following reference:
Peroni, Silvio (2015): Example of use of BiRO #3. figshare. http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1535530