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LINCS collaborates with scholars to help convert your research data into linked open data (LOD) and to publish that LOD as part of the LINCS Knowledge Graph. Publishing data with LINCS assumes that you have existing data—though not necessarily LOD—as opposed to creating LOD from the start

The conversion and publication process is a collaborative one, where LINCS provides resources, tools, and advice to guide your team’s work.

Knowledge Requirements

• It is helpful to have a basic understanding of LOD basics before beginning the conversion process.
• Think about how your project and data will benefit from using LOD technologies and what research questions you seek to answer with your converted data.

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• Start with introductory resources written by the LINCS team.
• View our LINCS Zotero Library for recommended readings, training modules, videos, and tools.
• LINCS often leads workshops at the DH@Guelph Summer Workshops, DHSI, and DHSITE. Check our events page for upcoming opportunities.

Data Requirements

• To contribute data to LINCS, you need to come with an existing dataset that fits within the LINCS Areas of Inquiry and one of our four data categories: structured, semi-structured, TEI, or natural language.
• Your dataset falls within the bounds of our Dataset Inclusion Policy (Coming Soon)
• You own the source dataset or have permission from the source dataset owner
• You have a long-term plan to store the source dataset in an institutional repository, a Trustworthy Digital Repository (such as Scholars Portal), or Canada’s Federated Research Data Repository
• Your dataset contents are publishable under Canadian law
• If your dataset involves people, you have ethics approval from your research institution (if applicable), and you meet the criteria set out in the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans

When you publish with LINCS, you are making your dataset available to—and connecting it with data created by—others. LINCS publishes data under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. In some cases, we are able to work with data that is not open. We respect data sovereignty and adhere to the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance.

Before we can prepare your data for publication, you need to sign the Data Publication License Agreement and complete the Data Publication License Agreement Supplementary Form. We recommend you review these documents before starting to create LOD. For more information, see the Data Publication License Agreement Instructions (Coming Soon).

Research Team Requirements

• The conversion process is led by the data holders, or research team, with support from the LINCS team. Each research team needs to have a Project Lead who is able to make conceptual decisions about the datasets. It is also a good idea to have someone on the research team who is able to perform data extraction and manipulation (i.e., convert the data into a particular format).

• Many of the steps in the conversion process, especially reconciliation, can be completed by student research assistants who understand the source data and have a basic technical aptitude. These research assistants are generally hired by and work with the research team. LINCS will assist with the more difficult tasks, including mapping the data to an ontology.

Next Step

Learn about the conversion and publication workflows.