Relationships are Complicated! An Analysis of Relationships Between Datasets on the Web

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the complex relationships between datasets on the Web, proposing a taxonomy, developing machine learning methods for identification, and highlighting gaps in semantic markup to improve dataset discovery and understanding.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive taxonomy of dataset relationships, develops machine learning methods with 90% accuracy for their identification, and discusses semantic markup gaps to enhance dataset linking.

Findings

Machine learning methods achieve 90% accuracy in classifying dataset relationships.

A comprehensive taxonomy of dataset relationships is proposed.

Gaps in semantic markup hinder the identification of dataset relationships.

Abstract

The Web today has millions of datasets, and the number of datasets continues to grow at a rapid pace. These datasets are not standalone entities; rather, they are intricately connected through complex relationships. Semantic relationships between datasets provide critical insights for research and decision-making processes. In this paper, we study dataset relationships from the perspective of users who discover, use, and share datasets on the Web: what relationships are important for different tasks? What contextual information might users want to know? We first present a comprehensive taxonomy of relationships between datasets on the Web and map these relationships to user tasks performed during dataset discovery. We develop a series of methods to identify these relationships and compare their performance on a large corpus of datasets generated from Web pages with schema.org markup. We demonstrate that machine-learning based methods that use dataset metadata achieve multi-class classification accuracy of 90%. Finally, we highlight gaps in available semantic markup for datasets and discuss how incorporating comprehensive semantics can facilitate the identification of dataset relationships. By providing a comprehensive overview of dataset relationships at scale, this paper sets a benchmark for future research.