Automatic semantic web annotation of named entities

Abstract

This paper describes a method to perform automated semantic annotation of named entities contained in large corpora. The semantic annotation is made in the context of the Semantic Web. The method is based on an algorithm that compares the set of words that appear before and after the name entity with the content of Wikipedia articles, and identifies the more relevant one by means of a similarity measure. It then uses the link that exists between the selected Wikipedia entry and the corresponding RDF description in the Linked Data project to establish a connection between the named entity and some URI in the Semantic Web. We present our system, discuss its architecture, and describe an algorithm dedicated to ontological disambiguation of named entities contained in large-scale corpora. We evaluate the algorithm, and present our results. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.