SEMIC Webinar on the use of dct:identifier in DCAT-AP

[sabinem]

Report on the SEMIC Webinar on Identifiers (17.3.2022)

About: SEMIC invited the European national portals to a webinar about the future use of identifiers in DCAT-AP: "DCAT-AP webinar on identifiers"

There had several proposals. We could vote at the beginning for between 2 meaning of identifiers:

• identifiers are meant to identify within catalogs
• identifiers are provided by the publishers of the datasets and are meant to identify the source of the dataset

The second option was adopted since 90% of the participants voted for that option

After that several Proposals were presented:

Proposal 1: DCAT-AP recommends that all datasets have exactly one dct:identifier

-> We already have that dct:identifier as 1:n on the dataset class: so maybe we should change that to 1:1

Proposal 2: The identifier should come with its own metadata: since dct:identifier is a literal, it can't by itself connect to the original datasource. Therefore it is recommended to add a adms:identifier so that the dct: identifier can be set into context:

dct:identifier "dek-gs-3@kanton-thurgau";
adms:identifier [
  skos:notation "dek-gs-3@kanton-thurgau" ;
  dct:creator <https://opendata.swiss/organization/kanton-thurgau> ; ] ;

there can be more adms:identifier, but at least one of those should further describe dct:identifier

-> we don't have adms:identifier on the dataset class yet, so we should consider to add this.

Proposal 3: The dct:identifier should be the IRI of the dataset:

<https://data.tg.ch/catalog/datasets/dek-av-23> a dcat:Dataset ;   
  dct:identifier "https://data.tg.ch/catalog/datasets/dek-av-23";
  adms:idetifier [
    skos:notation "https://data.tg.ch/catalog/datasets/dek-av-23";
    dct:creator <https://opendata.swiss/organization/kanton-thurgau>

-> We should consider to add this to the usage note, but it seems difficult to implement this: currently many Swiss datasets don't have a URI and if the have one, it is not the dct:identifier of the dataset.

There was a fourth proposal, but that one was not very well received by the community. The idea was that harvesters should also add an adms:identifier
with dct:creator the dataportal that did the harvesting.
I have especially asked for guidance on how to implement Proposal 3 and someone else asked for that as well.
There will be a next Webinar on the topic. And I will mention it here, so that eCH Fachgruppen memeber, that are interested to attend will be able to ask SEMIC for an invitation.