MINOS is an object-oriented multimedia information system that provides integrated facilities for creating and managing complex multimedia objects. In this paper the model for multimedia documents supported by MINOS and its implementation is described. Described in particular are functions provided in MINOS that exploit the capabilities of a modern workstation equipped with image and voice input-output devices to accomplish an active multimedia document presentation and browsing within documents. These functions are powerful enough to support a variety of office applications. Also described are functions provided for the extraction of information from multimedia documents that exist in a large repository of information (multimedia document archiver) and functions that select and transform this information. Facilities for information sharing among objects of the archiver are described; an interactive multimedia editor that is used for the extraction and interactive creation of new information is outlined; finally, a multimedia document formatter that is used to synthesize a new multimedia document from extracted and interactively generated information is presented. This prototype system runs on a SUN-3 workstation running UNIX'". An Instavox, directly addressable, analog device is used to store voice segments.

The aggregation of heterogeneous data from different institutions in cultural heritage and e-science has the potential to create rich data resources useful for a range of different purposes, from research to education and public interests. In this paper, we present the X3ML framework, a framework for information integration that handles effectively and efficiently the steps involved in schema mapping, uniform resource identifier (URI) definition and generation, data transformation, provision and aggregation. The framework is based on the X3ML mapping definition language for describing both schema mappings and URI generation policies and has a lot of advantages when compared with other relevant frameworks. We describe the architecture of the framework as well as details on the various available components. Usability aspects are discussed and performance metrics are demonstrated. The high impact of our work is B Yannis Marketakis

Virtual Research Environments (VREs), also known as science gateways or virtual laboratories, assist researchers in data science by integrating tools for data discovery, data retrieval, workflow management and researcher collaboration, often coupled with specific computing infrastructure. Recently, the push for better open data science has led to the creation of a variety of dedicated research infrastructures (RIs) that gather data and provide services to different research communities, all of which can be used independently of any specific VRE. There is therefore a need for generic VREs that can be coupled with the resources of many different RIs simultaneously, easily customised to the needs of specific communities. The resource metadata produced by these RIs rarely all adhere to any one standard or vocabulary however, making it difficult to search and discover resources independently of their providers without some translation into a common framework. Cross-RI search can be expedited by using mapping services that harvest RI-published metadata to build unified resource catalogues, but the development and operation of such services pose a number of challenges. In this paper, we discuss some of these challenges and look specifically at the VRE4EIC Metadata Portal, which uses X3ML mappings to build a single catalogue for describing data products and other resources provided by multiple RIs. The Metadata Portal was built in accordance to the e-VRE Reference Architecture, a microservice-based architecture for generic modular VREs, and uses the CERIF standard to structure its catalogued metadata. We consider the extent to which it addresses the challenges of cross-RI search, particularly in the environmental and earth science domain, and how it can be further augmented, for example to take advantage of linked vocabularies to provide more intelligent semantic search across multiple domains of discourse.

This paper elaborates on the problem of modeling provenance for both physical and digital objects. In particular it discusses provenance according to OAIS (ISO 14721:2003) and how it relates with the conceptualization of CIDOC CRM ontology (ISO 21127:2006). Subsequently it introduces an extension of the CIDOC CRM ontology, able to capture the modeling and the query requirements regarding the provenance of digital objects. Over this extension the paper provides a number of indicative examples of modeling provenance in various domains. Subsequently, it introduces a number of indicative provenance query templates, and finally it describes an implementation using Semantic Web technologies.

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