Moving from dataset metadata to semantics in ecological research: a case in translating EML to OWL

The Ecological Metadata Language (EML) is an XML-based metadata specification developed for the description of datasets and their associated context in ecology. The conversion of EML metadata to an ontological form has been addressed in existing observation ontologies, which are able of providing a degree of computational semantics to the description of the datasets, including the reuse of scientific ontologies to express the observed entities and their characteristics. However, a number of practical issues regarding the automated translation of the available EML datasets to a representation with formal semantics and its subsequent integration into Research Information Systems (RIS) require separate attention. These issues include expressing meaning by using existing terminologies, the mapping of EML with models of research information and the mapping with mainstream metadata schema. This paper describes the approach taken for that purpose in the VOA3R project, describing the main mapping and translation decisions taken so far and some common pitfalls with metadata records as they are currently available through the Web