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Cool URIs for FAIR Knowledge Graphs

Andreas Thalhammer

TL;DR

This paper revisits the traditional Cool URIs guidance in the context of FAIR Knowledge Graphs, arguing that URIs must be stable, secure, and dereferenceable to support machine consumption and long-term data stewardship. It presents a practical guide covering ownership decisions, secure scheme choice (favoring https), dereferenceability through 303 redirects and content negotiation, and a life-cycle model for decommissioning and succession. A central theme is the use of opaque accession identifiers and a central redirect service to decouple identifiers from evolving systems, reducing fragility during migrations. The guidance offers concrete design rules and trade-offs to help practitioners build durable, scalable, and interoperable knowledge graphs with robust publication and reuse semantics.

Abstract

This guide is for everyone who seeks advice for creating stable, secure, and persistent Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) in order to publish their data in accordance to the FAIR principles. The use case does not matter. It could range from publishing the results of a small research project to a large knowledge graph at a big corporation. The FAIR principles apply equally and this is why it is important to put extra thought into the URI selection process. The title aims to extend the tradition of "Cool URIs don't change" and "Cool URIs for the Semantic Web". Much has changed since the publication of these works and we would like to revisit some of the principles. Many still hold today, some had to be reworked, and we could also identify new ones

Cool URIs for FAIR Knowledge Graphs

TL;DR

This paper revisits the traditional Cool URIs guidance in the context of FAIR Knowledge Graphs, arguing that URIs must be stable, secure, and dereferenceable to support machine consumption and long-term data stewardship. It presents a practical guide covering ownership decisions, secure scheme choice (favoring https), dereferenceability through 303 redirects and content negotiation, and a life-cycle model for decommissioning and succession. A central theme is the use of opaque accession identifiers and a central redirect service to decouple identifiers from evolving systems, reducing fragility during migrations. The guidance offers concrete design rules and trade-offs to help practitioners build durable, scalable, and interoperable knowledge graphs with robust publication and reuse semantics.

Abstract

This guide is for everyone who seeks advice for creating stable, secure, and persistent Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) in order to publish their data in accordance to the FAIR principles. The use case does not matter. It could range from publishing the results of a small research project to a large knowledge graph at a big corporation. The FAIR principles apply equally and this is why it is important to put extra thought into the URI selection process. The title aims to extend the tradition of "Cool URIs don't change" and "Cool URIs for the Semantic Web". Much has changed since the publication of these works and we would like to revisit some of the principles. Many still hold today, some had to be reworked, and we could also identify new ones
Paper Structure (20 sections, 2 figures)

This paper contains 20 sections, 2 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. TL;DR
  2. Introduction
  3. Guide
  4. Ownership
  5. https://
  6. Dereferenceability
  7. Real-world Resources
  8. Content Negotiation
  9. URI Life Cycle
  10. Hosting a Central Redirect Service
  11. Authentication
  12. Short Stable Paths
  13. Opaque Accession Identifiers
  14. Mnemonic
  15. Opaque
  16. ...and 5 more sections

Figures (2)

  • Figure 1: Example of a "Cool URI for a FAIR Knowledge Graph".
  • Figure 2: Example: Implementation of 303 redirects with w3id.org for the https://w3id.org/303 property.