Semantically Enhanced Interactions between Heterogeneous Data Life-Cycles: Analyzing Educational Lexica in a Virtual Research Environment

Abstract

This paper highlights how Semantic Web technologies facilitate new socio-technical interactions between researchers and libraries focussing research data in a Virtual Research Environment. Concerning data practices in the fields of social sciences and humanities, the worlds of researchers and librarians have so far been separate. The increased digitization of research data and the ubiquitous use of Web technologies change this situation and offer new capacities for interaction. This is realized as a semantically enhanced Virtual Research Environment, which offers the possibility to align the previously disparate data life-cycles in research and in libraries covering a variety of inter-activities from importing research data via enriching research data and cleansing to exporting and sharing to allow for reuse. Currently, collaborative qualitative and quantitative analyses of a large digital corpus of educational lexica are carried out using this semantic and wiki-based research environment. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2013.