Ontological Mapping for Semantic Search in Shodhganga: A National Repository of Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Abstract

Creation of research results and its publications is extremely important for further research in the same area. Research institutions are already making their best effort to digitize their research output and keeping it in an archive as repository for internal access and sharing among peer research. Open access model has paved way for publishing the research result on public access mode. Shodhganga is a National Repository of Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) awarded in Indian Universities. Search and discovery of content in a semantic approach is paramount for a researcher to navigate to the proper content in ETDs. Creation of meta-data, organizing it in a logically linked relation is proposed for a semantic visual browser. Use of ontology for the explicit specification of conceptualization of the important meta-data elements by using latest semantic tools such as RDF/XML, OWL, Protégé, NeOn toolkit are discussed in this paper. A conceptual framework for ontologies based on the standard and advanced ontological model and its creation and implementation with reference to ETDs is also discussed.