Open Password – Monday June 27, 2022
Double issue: #1094 and #1095
WTI-Frankfurt digital – FIZ Technik – TIB – Hans-Jürgen Herrmann – Willi Bredemeier – Open Password – Sigrid Riedel – Peter Genth – Federal Ministry of Economics – VDMA – Smaller associations – No cost coverage – New competitors – Database production – Sales – FIZ Karlsruhe – Integration from FIZ Technik to the TIB – BMBF – State of Lower Saxony
Open Science – Knowledge Graphs – Linked Open Data – Ontologies – ZPID – Tina Trillitzsch – Linked Open Data Cloud – ZPID Knowledge Graphs – PSYNDEX – PubPsych – PsychArchives – Open Knowledge Graph – SPARQL – Semantic – Entities – Relationships – Properties – Semantic Network – Semantic Search engine – Google’s Knwledge Graph – Amazon’s Alexa – Wikidata – Psychology – Resource Description and Access – Semantic Modeling -PsychPorta – PsychAuthors
APE 2022 – APE 2023 – Outsell – Marketing Research – B2B Media and Business Information -Marketing Budgets – Westlaw – Antitrust Liability – Kantar – Climate Central – Climate Shift Index – Project Consult – Ulrich Kampffmeyer – Information Management – Information Management Solutions – PCIM – Renato Herrmann
Title 1:
Letter to WTI-Frankfurt digital and FIZ Technik
The decline began with FIZ Technik – Integration into the TIB could have been the solution – Secretly the economy withdraws from responsibility (Herrmann)
Title 2:
Open Science: Knowledge Graphs, Linked Open Data and Ontologies for the psychological data sets of the Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID) – Second Part – By Tina Trillitzsch
APE 2022 and 2023Full Video Recordings Free to Acces
4.
Heard While Outselling
Marketing Research and B2B Business Information is on the rise
5.
PROJECT CONSULT turns 30
Ulrich Kampffmeyer leaves (partially)
Letter to WTI-Frankfurt digital
and FIZ Technik
The decline began with FIZ Technik.
Integration into TIB could have been the solution
The economy’s secret withdrawal
from responsibility
Dear Mr. Bredemeier,
By chance I took another look at your Password Online and am sobered by the history and the end of the WTI Frankfurt, which really touched me when I read it. I feel very sorry for the employees! They now had to eat the soup that others gave them long ago!
This must have been a big shock for the management of the WTI, especially Ms. Riedel, even though they fought very bravely to preserve the WTI. For many who identified with this work and service of the WTI and formerly FIZ Technik eV, a piece of their life’s work may have been destroyed.
As you know, I sat on the FIZ Technology Advisory Board for many years and over the years there were countless funding applications over my desk at the “Technical Information” project agency. I can no longer say anything precise about the amount of tax money that has now unfortunately been wasted, as all my files and notes have been shredded and destroyed. In recent years I have only seen the WTI Frankfurt sporadically from a distance.
I can still say a lot about the decline of FIZ Technik. I want to limit myself to just a few points. Unfortunately, the decline of FIZ Technik began during the time of the then managing director Genth. It continued with an unfortunate succession in management and the unexpected withdrawal of funding from the Federal Ministry of Economics (BMWi).
I would like to briefly explain why I am touched by the final end of the WTI Frankfurt. Its predecessor institution, FIZ Technik eV, was organized as an unconventional association and, in principle, it was supported by business associations (in particular the VDMA) and financially supported by the BMWi. FIZ Technik generated income from its self-produced databases and from the sale of scientific and technical products. There were also sporadic projects and services. His customer base included many university libraries, large scientific institutions (such as the Fraunhofer Society) and some business customers, mainly larger companies in German-speaking countries. FIZ Technik generated significant income from its self-produced databases, but over the years it did not fully cover its costs. With the rise of the Internet and competing publishers who could provide not only references but also full texts, FIZ Technik faced increasing competition in its field.
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We always thought about and talked about viable solutions.
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Since FIZ Technik lacked the means to invest in new business areas and the corporate form was a hindrance to a realignment on the market, over the years people repeatedly thought about how this institution could be placed on a more solid basis. Discussions included the separation of database production from sales, combined with a new legal form of sales, and even giving away the databases produced in-house to the competitor FIZ Karlsruhe. Closer collaborations with publishers and expanding our own product portfolio were also repeatedly considered.
I myself have repeatedly insisted that a solution had to be found for FIZ Technik, and I pleaded with the BMWI to stop funding immediately when the VDMA stopped its direct funding. His argument was that his members would have to pay twice for the FIZ’s services. The discontinuation of direct funding by the VDMA meant the end of the industry’s commitment. Other smaller associations had already stopped their direct co-financing and were only represented on the user advisory board. For the BMWi, this withdrawal of the associations should have been a turning point – combined with the immediate end of funding unless a viable solution could be found for the future. Unfortunately, the economy was not held accountable and was able to quietly withdraw from this long-standing institution.
This meant that an important point in time had been missed and the FIZ Technik was left to its own devices and solely dependent on funding from the BMWi.
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The integration of FIZ technology into the TIB could have been the solution.
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Around the years 2008-2010, I repeatedly pointed out to the BMWi that the long-term future of FIZ Technik was still up in the air, despite a medium-term funding commitment from the BMWi (as far as I remember, funding was promised until around 2012).
My suggestion to the BMWI was to integrate FIZ Technik into the TIB Hannover (TIB – Leibniz Information Center for Technology and Natural Sciences and University Library). This was pursued seriously by us and the BMWi (the head of department at the BMWi at the time, Mr. Schnoor, came from Hanover and had very good contacts with the state government). Schnoor was very committed and committed to this solution.
Unfortunately, these efforts failed and the BMWi stopped its funding overnight (despite an existing notice and a written medium-term funding commitment). The reasons for this are not entirely clear to me and the BMWi only communicated its decision to us verbally without giving the exact reasons for it. The BMWi – the head of the BMWi department at the time – informed me informally that the TIB’s donors and sponsors had spoken out against integration. But I suspect that the abrupt attitude is also due to a human component. The then managing director of FIZ Technik and the head of department at the BMWi did not “harmonize” with each other! Furthermore, the time window within which action had to be taken was very small. Neither an expert report was commissioned on the integration of FIZ Technik into the TIB nor were sound legal considerations drawn up. The whole thing failed in advance and was not consistently pursued.
In this respect, it is not entirely clear whether it was the BMBF (which was probably involved), the state of Lower Saxony, the TIB management at the time or even the management of the FIZ that caused the integration to fail so miserably in advance. I really regretted this because I thought it was a very good and viable solution. The FIZ technology and its databases would certainly have been a win-win situation for the TIB.
However, integration would have been difficult: FIZ Technik was an offshoot of the VDMA. The employees were paid according to the IGM tariff analogous to the VDMA and they were entitled to pension entitlements as additional pensions analogous to the VDMA. These structures were not compatible with those of the public service!
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The Economy: Secretly Abandoning Responsibility.
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In this respect, I have to say that unfortunately I was right years ago. The time to reorganize FIZ Technik has been missed. In any case, a viable solution should have been sought and found for the FIZ with the departure of long-time managing director Genth.
Furthermore, the BMWi should not have suddenly stopped its funding without a realignment. At least the BMWi should have secured and retained its proportionate rights to the databases with reservations – in the event that unfortunately has now occurred.
Last but not least, the economy is ultimately to blame for the misery. She managed to secretly transfer responsibility to the BMWi.
Kind regards, Hans-Jürgen Herrmann, Bonn
Open science
knowledge graphs, linked open data and ontologies for the psychological data sets of the Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID)
Knowledge graphs in the “wild” – plans and goals after the ontology is completed
Second part
By Tina Trillitzsch
Tina Trillitzsch
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Knowledge graphs in the “wild”
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From 2000 to around 2010, knowledge graphs and the “Semantic Web” were popular funding and research topics in the academic sector. Since then, the publication industry has become quieter about it, but that is deceptive: Today, knowledge graphs have been set up and functioning almost unnoticed in many places on the web.
A prominent example is Google’s Knowledge Graph , which we come across in almost every web search, for example when a “knowledge panel” on the right in the hit list presents certain information in a structured manner (founded: 1971; main location: Trier) or even when Google gives a specific one as the first hit Returns a result value like “1971” and only then lists websites. The same applies to other search engines such as Bing.
Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant also uses semantic information from a knowledge graph.
The following applies to these systems: Whenever a very specific, small piece of information is provided as an answer, there is probably a knowledge graph in play, e.g. B. when answering “Which federal state is Trier in?” – “Trier is in Rhineland-Palatinate” (Alexa) or “When was the ZPID founded” – “1971” (Google; by the way, that’s not entirely correct – the approval was granted in 1971, work only started in 1972). If instead the excerpt from a website where the search text occurs (Alexa) or websites are listed (Google search) is read out, what you are looking for is not in the company’s own knowledge graph and the services switch to other data that is not enriched with meaning, but rather The searched terms only contain verbatim or similar word form.
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Linked Open Data (LOD) and Linked Open Data Cloud
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Linked Open Data (LOD) is when knowledge graphs are freely accessible and reusable on the Internet, use open data formats and standards such as RDF, RDFS, OWL, SKOS and SPARQL and when their entities and relationships are compatible with similar and congruent entities and relationship types in others LOD knowledge graphs are linked.
All linked Linked Open Data knowledge graphs together form a global knowledge network, the so-called Linked Open Data Cloud , which contains graphs from both the general area and specific knowledge areas. One of the largest knowledge graphs in the LOD cloud is Wikidata , a knowledge graph from the Wikimedia Foundation that also offers structured, semantic information for every “thing” with a Wikipedia page (and many others), maintained by volunteers. Of course there is also the ZPID as an entity at Wikidata . In the spirit of open science principles, ZPID also wants to be part of this well-connected LOD cloud with its data offerings.
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What is an ontology?
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Ontologies are formal models for the knowledge graph of a specific knowledge area. As a kind of blueprint they lay out:
- which types and subtypes of “things” there should be in the knowledge graph (classes);
- what relationships entities of these types can have, what they are called and what they mean,
- On the one hand, these are relationships between two entities (e.g. publication entities need a relationship of the type “has author” to a person entity);
- on the other hand, these are relationships between entities and their properties (e.g. publication entities need “publication date”, “publication title”.);
- the logic rules according to which computers infer new knowledge that was not explicitly stored in the graph, but only arises indirectly, for example: Person A is linked to a university via the relationship “has a research assistant”, Person B with the relationship “has a research assistant”. Since these two relationships are a subtype of the “has employee” relationship, both can be listed together using the query for the “has employee” supertype.
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Practical implementation: Ontology and knowledge graph of psychology at ZPID
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The ontology at ZPID models the field of psychology , in particular publications and research data, the associated people and organizations, as well as several keyword and classification systems with which the entities are thematically indexed. It is based on the RDA (Resource Description and Access) rules for library cataloging, which distinguishes between works, expressions, manifestations and copies in publications and identifies the people and entities involved (authors, editors, publishers, research institutes). understands unique entities of the supertype “actor”. These actors serve as authority data, so that two publications by the same author are linked to the same person entity even if that person published them under different names. The person’s authority data entity is linked to all known name variant values.
The ontology is currently being built in parallel with the development of a new recording system for PSYNDEX. So far, the focus has been primarily on modeling the actors, i.e. corporations (publishers, universities, research institutes, funding organizations, specialist societies and conferences) and people and their relationships with each other, with places and publications and their value attributes (names, abbreviations, grid and ORCID ID …).
The rough steps are:
- Determine the required entity types for our requirements (e.g. types of corporations to be distinguished), relationships (work – “has author” –> person) and values (main name, abbreviation, date of founding);
- Semantic modeling : “Translating” the entities, relationships, values & logical rules as an ontology in RDF format; sensible hierarchies & systematic naming, close to RDA and other ontologies (e.g. GND, Wikidata);
- Mapping to classes and relationships in third-party ontologies (“mapping”) to query the data from outside using third-party vocabularies (RDA, GND, etc.);
- Transferring the entity types, relationships and names into analog data structures in the new recording system
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Plans and goals after completion of the ontology
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The first goal is to make the data from the new recording system available as an open knowledge graph. To do this, they must be automatically converted regularly from its database, following the blueprint of the ontology. Another major goal is the implementation of the semantic search engine PsychPorta , which is intended to replace the previous portal PubPsych . It will access the knowledge graph as the main data source and make its content easily accessible to end users. The PsychAuthors platform , which provides profiles of researchers in psychology, will also be renewed. In the future, it should also use the knowledge graph as a basis, especially the personal normative data.
Tina Trillitzsch is a computer scientist in the information & research department at ZPID (Leibniz Institute for Psychology). She has worked in the areas of conceptualizing information architectures and front-end web development and has many years of experience with literature databases in the field of psychology. She is currently developing an ontology for the semantic indexing of ZPID’s databases, including the literature database PSYNDEX. She is also responsible for the development and maintenance of the help and information website psyndex.de responsible
APE 2022 and 2023
2022: Full Video Recordings Free to Access
10-11 January 2023, APE 2023 – APE 2022: The full video recordings are now free to access and are available until after the next conference in January 2023. There is no need to register for access!
Heard While Outselling*
Marketing research and
B2B business information on the rise
We’ve been talking to clients in the Marketing Research and B2B Media and Business Information spaces who saw a nice bounce in these sectors in 2021 relative to the bottom that was 2020. The overall consensus is that this year will see good growth in each segment , but less than in 2021.
Relatedly, Outsell is also hearing that marketing budgets are okay so far. We generally aren’t hearing of firms envisioning budget cuts ahead, even though bankers are being consistent with the message of an upcoming recession. Budgeting processes for 2023 continue and might be more clear as we move into the fall.
*
Westlaw Must Face Antitrust Claims in a Case That Could Boost Competitive Compatibility
Westlaw is very likely to face antitrust liability. A federal court has ruled that ROSS Intelligence, a tiny rival offering new research tools (which Westlaw forced out of business with a copyright infringement suit) could proceed with claims that Westlaw uses exclusionary and anticompetitive practices to maintain its monopoly over the legal research mark
Kantar Launches Trend Analysis and Creative Testing Tools
Kantar has launched a cross-category search prediction tool called Emerging Trends; added a suite of products and enhancements to its creative testing portfolio on Kantar Marketplace; and opened the iLab innovation center.
New Index Reveals Influence of Climate Change on Local Weather in Real Time
Climate Central launched the Climate Shift Index, a tool to quantify the impact of climate change on local weather in real time. Based on peer-reviewed science, the Climate Shift Index offers a clear and accessible way for communicators to explain climate change connections to local conditions as they happen.
*Outsell is the international partner of Open Password.
PROJECT CONSULT turns 30
Ulrich Kampffmeyer leaves (partially)
(Project Consult) On July 1st, PROJECT CONSULT management consultancy celebrates Dr. Ulrich Kampffmeyer GmbH in Hamburg celebrates its 30th anniversary ( https://bit.ly/PC30Years ). Dr. Ulrich Kampffmeyer and his team have played a key role in shaping the market for information management and information management solutions in Germany ( https://bit.ly/Kff-Wiki ).
Topics such as audit-proof archiving, enterprise content management, records management and information governance are hardly conceivable without these activities. In hundreds of projects, PROJECT CONSULT has advised on the introduction of electronic archive, document management, business process management, ECM, e-file and other IT solutions for information management.
Kampffmeyer recently celebrated his 70th birthday – time for change, as he believes ( https://bit.ly/DrUKff-70 ). From July 1st, PROJECT CONSULT Information Management PCIM GmbH will continue the project, consulting and further training activities of PROJECT CONSULT ( www.PROJECT-CONSULT.de ). Managing director of the new PROJECTCONSULT PCIM is Kampffmeyer’s long-time colleague, Renato Herrmann.
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