FAIRsharing record for: W3C Provenance Ontology

This FAIRsharing record describes: The PROV Ontology (PROV-O) expresses the PROV Data Model using the OWL2 Web Ontology Language (OWL2). It is intended for the Linked Data and Semantic Web community. It provides a set of classes, properties, and restrictions that can be used to represent and interchange provenance information generated in different systems and under different contexts. It can also be specialized to create new classes and properties to model provenance information for different applications and domains. PROV-O is one serialization of PROV-DM, the other two being PROV-N and PROV-XML. PROV-DM and PROV-O define how to represent provenance on the World Wide Web, and as such additional documentation has been included in this record for PROV-AQ (Access and Query), a note which describes how standard web protocols may be used to locate, retrieve and query provenance records. PROV-DC provides a mapping from Dublin Core to PROV-O, and is listed in this record. For the purpose of this specification, provenance is defined as a record that describes the people, institutions, entities, and activities involved in producing, influencing, or delivering a piece of data or a thing. In particular, the provenance of information is crucial in deciding whether information is to be trusted, how it should be integrated with other diverse information sources, and how to give credit to its originators when reusing it. In an open and inclusive environment such as the Web, where users find information that is often contradictory or questionable, provenance can help those users to make trust judgements.

本FAIRsharing记录介绍如下内容：PROV本体（PROV Ontology，PROV-O）采用OWL2 Web本体语言（OWL2）对PROV数据模型（PROV-DM）进行表达。其面向关联数据（Linked Data）与语义网（Semantic Web）领域社群，提供了一系列类、属性与约束规则，可用于表征并交换不同系统、不同场景下生成的溯源信息。亦可通过特化操作创建新的类与属性，为不同应用与领域构建溯源信息模型。
PROV-O是PROV数据模型（PROV-DM）的三种序列化形式之一，其余两种分别为PROV-N与PROV-XML。PROV-DM与PROV-O定义了万维网环境下溯源信息的表征方式，因此本记录额外收录了PROV-AQ（访问与查询，Access and Query）的相关文档——该文档阐述了如何通过标准Web协议定位、获取并查询溯源记录。PROV-DC提供了从都柏林核心元数据（Dublin Core）到PROV-O的映射关系，本记录亦将其收录。
本规范将溯源信息定义为：用于描述生成、影响或交付某一数据或实体所涉及的人员、机构、实体与活动的记录。尤为重要的是，信息的溯源信息可用于判断该信息的可信度、如何与其他多元信息源进行整合，以及在复用该信息时如何标注其原创者的来源。在万维网这类开放包容的环境中，用户常遇到相互矛盾或存疑的信息，溯源信息可帮助用户做出信任判断。