Application of semantic technologies in bibliographic databases: A literature review and classification

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the current state of the existing research on the application of semantic technologies in bibliographic databases by providing answers to a set of research questions resulting from a systematic literature review.

Design/methodology/approach

The present study consists of conducting a systematic literature review of research works related to the application of semantic technologies in bibliographic databases. A manual keyword search is performed in known academic databases. As a result, a total of 78 literature sources are identified as related to the topic and included in the review. From the selected literature sources, information is extracted, which is then summarized and analyzed according to previously defined research questions and finally reported. Besides, a framework is defined to classify literature sources found and collected as a result of the study. The main criteria, according to which the classification is performed, are the used semantic technology and the research problem for which semantic technologies are applied in bibliographic databases. The classification of the publications is verified by each author independently of others.

Findings

The conducted systematic scientific review establishes that the evolution of semantic technologies sets a period of increased interest in the researchers, as a result of which the advantages of using them for bibliographic descriptions are examined and practically confirmed. After defining semantic models for bibliographic descriptions and approaches to transform existing bibliographic data into their correspondence, the research interest is directed at their comparison, collation; enrichment to facilitate search and retrieval of useful information. Possible perspectives for future research are outlined, which mainly relate to the complete use of the created data sets and their transformation into knowledge repositories.

Originality/value

Despite the increasing importance of the semantic technologies in various areas, including the bibliographic databases, there is a lack of comprehensive literature review and classification of literature sources relevant to this topic. The detailed study proposed in the present paper supports introducing with the existing experience in the application of semantic technologies in bibliographic databases, as well as facilitates the discovery of trends and guidelines for future research.

Citation

Georgieva-Trifonova, T., Zdravkov, K. and Valcheva, D. (2020), "Application of semantic technologies in bibliographic databases: A literature review and classification", The Electronic Library, Vol. 38 No. 1, pp. 113-137. https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-03-2019-0081