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Syntactic vs Semantic knowledge representation languages

FAIR I1 requires that metadata use a formal, accessible, shared and broadly applicable language for knowledge representation. The purpose of this principle is to ensure that metadata is expressed in a standardised format that can be interpreted and exchanged across systems.

FAIRsharing provides an API query that allows users to determine whether the formats associated with a database registered in FAIRsharing are syntactic or semantic. This information can be used by communities who wish to evaluate the FAIR-enabling qualities of a database in a more granular fashion, as grounded/linked data formats are considered more FAIR than syntactic ones. Syntactic formats (like CSV or XML) only provide basic structure, allowing a machine to parse rows and columns. Semantic formats (like JSON-LD or RDF) embed the meaning directly into the data.

This page lists those core/generic formats and languages that are considered syntactic and semantic. If a database record has a relationship to a model/format that is based on one of these generic formats, it will be assigned to the appropriate syntactic/semantic category.

Syntactic
Semantic

JSON: https://fairsharing.org/FAIRsharing.5bbab9arrow-up-right HTML: https://fairsharing.org/FAIRsharing.YugnuLarrow-up-right XML: https://fairsharing.org/FAIRsharing.b5cc91arrow-up-right CSV: https://fairsharing.org/FAIRsharing.1943d4arrow-up-right YAML: https://fairsharing.org/FAIRsharing.288192arrow-up-right TSV: https://fairsharing.org/FAIRsharing.a978c9arrow-up-right HDF5: https://fairsharing.org/FAIRsharing.wvgta9arrow-up-right

JSON-LD: https://fairsharing.org/FAIRsharing.8f9bbbarrow-up-right RDF: https://fairsharing.org/FAIRsharing.p77ph9arrow-up-right RDF/XML: https://fairsharing.org/FAIRsharing.5cae72arrow-up-right TriG: https://fairsharing.org/7816arrow-up-right N-Quads: https://fairsharing.org/7817arrow-up-right RDFa: https://fairsharing.org/663arrow-up-right OWL: https://fairsharing.org/FAIRsharing.atygwyarrow-up-right OBO: https://fairsharing.org/FAIRsharing.aa0eatarrow-up-right TTL: https://fairsharing.org/FAIRsharing.3e194carrow-up-right N-triples: https://fairsharing.org/7815arrow-up-right

If you would like a format adding to this list, please get in touch with us.

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