{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,31]],"date-time":"2026-03-31T14:38:36Z","timestamp":1774967916245,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":51,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"12","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2022,11,30]],"date-time":"2022-11-30T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1669766400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Universitas XXI"},{"name":"Spanish Minister of Universities"},{"name":"NextGenerationEU funds"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Information"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Research-Performing Organizations (e.g., research centers, universities) usually accumulate a wealth of data related to their researchers, the generated scientific results and research outputs, and publicly and privately-funded projects that support their activities, etc. Even though the types of data handled may look similar across organizations, it is common to see that each institution has developed its own data model to provide support for many of their administrative activities (project reporting, curriculum management, personnel management, etc.). This creates obstacles to the integration and linking of knowledge across organizations, as well as difficulties when researchers move from one institution to another. In this paper, we take advantage of the ontology network created by the Spanish HERCULES initiative to facilitate the construction of knowledge graphs from existing information systems, such as the one managed by the company Universitas XXI, which provides support to more than 100 Spanish-speaking research-performing organizations worldwide. Our effort is not just focused on following the modeling choices from that ontology, but also on demonstrating how the use of standard declarative mapping rules (i.e., R2RML) guarantees a systematic and sustainable workflow for constructing and maintaining a KG. We also present several real-world use cases in which the proposed workflow is adopted together with a set of lessons learned and general recommendations that may also apply to other domains. The next steps include researching in the automation of the creation of the mapping rules, the enrichment of the KG with external sources, and its exploitation though distributed environments.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/info13120562","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2022,11,30]],"date-time":"2022-11-30T05:45:22Z","timestamp":1669787122000},"page":"562","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":11,"title":["Systematic Construction of Knowledge Graphs for Research-Performing Organizations"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"13","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-3236-2789","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"David","family":"Chaves-Fraga","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Ontology Engineering Group, Universidad Polit\u00e9cnica de Madrid, 28660 Boadilla del Monte, Spain"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9260-0753","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Oscar","family":"Corcho","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Ontology Engineering Group, Universidad Polit\u00e9cnica de Madrid, 28660 Boadilla del Monte, Spain"}]},{"given":"Francisco","family":"Yedro","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Ontology Engineering Group, Universidad Polit\u00e9cnica de Madrid, 28660 Boadilla del Monte, Spain"}]},{"given":"Roberto","family":"Moreno","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Universitas XXI, 28043 Madrid, Spain"}]},{"given":"Juan","family":"Ol\u00edas","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Universitas XXI, 28043 Madrid, Spain"}]},{"given":"Alejandro","family":"De La Azuela","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Universitas XXI, 28043 Madrid, Spain"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2022,11,30]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"Asserson, A., Jeffery, K.G., and Lopatenko, A. (2002). CERIF: Past, Present and Future: An Overview, Technical Report; euroCRIS."},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-031-01918-0","article-title":"Knowledge Graphs","volume":"12","author":"Hogan","year":"2021","journal-title":"Synth. Lect. Data, Semant. Knowl."},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"706","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jbi.2008.03.004","article-title":"Bio2RDF: Towards a mashup to build bioinformatics knowledge systems","volume":"41","author":"Belleau","year":"2008","journal-title":"J. Biomed. Inform."},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Jaradeh, M.Y., Oelen, A., Farfar, K.E., Prinz, M., D\u2019Souza, J., Kismih\u00f3k, G., Stocker, M., and Auer, S. (2019, January 19\u201321). Open research knowledge graph: Next generation infrastructure for semantic scholarly knowledge. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Knowledge Capture, Marina Del Rey, CA, USA.","DOI":"10.1145\/3360901.3364435"},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Scrocca, M., Comerio, M., Carenini, A., and Celino, I. (2020, January 2\u20136). Turning transport data to comply with EU standards while enabling a multimodal transport knowledge graph. Proceedings of the International Semantic Web Conference, Athens, Greece.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-030-62466-8_26"},{"key":"ref_6","unstructured":"(2022, October 03). Google Knowledge Graph. Available online: https:\/\/developers.google.com\/knowledge-graph."},{"key":"ref_7","unstructured":"(2022, October 03). Amazon Knowledge Graph. Available online: https:\/\/www.amazon.science\/tag\/knowledge-graphs."},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Auer, S., Bizer, C., Kobilarov, G., Lehmann, J., Cyganiak, R., and Ives, Z. (2007). DBpedia: A nucleus for a web of open data. The Semantic Web, Springer.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-540-76298-0_52"},{"key":"ref_9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"78","DOI":"10.1145\/2629489","article-title":"Wikidata: A free collaborative knowledgebase","volume":"57","year":"2014","journal-title":"Commun. ACM"},{"key":"ref_10","unstructured":"(2022, October 03). Spanish Association of Universities (CRUE). Available online: https:\/\/www.crue.org\/."},{"key":"ref_11","unstructured":"Emaldi, M., Puerta, M., Buj\u00e1n, D., L\u00f3pez-de Ipi\u00f1a, D., Azcona, E.R., Gayo, J.E.L., Sota, E., and Maturana, R.A. (Semantic Web, 2022). ROH: Towards a highly usable and flexible knowledge model for the academic and research domains, Semantic Web, under review."},{"key":"ref_12","unstructured":"(2022, September 03). Hercules Project\u2014University of Murcia. Available online: https:\/\/www.um.es\/en\/web\/hercules\/inicio."},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Corson-Rikert, J., Mitchell, S., Lowe, B., Rejack, N., Ding, Y., and Guo, C. (2012). The VIVO ontology. Synthesis Lectures on Semantic Web: Theory and Technology, Morgan and Claypool Publishers.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-031-79435-3_2"},{"key":"ref_14","unstructured":"(2022, September 03). Bibliographic Ontology (BIBO). Available online: https:\/\/bibliontology.com\/."},{"key":"ref_15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Peroni, S., and Shotton, D. (2018, January 8\u201312). The SPAR ontologies. Proceedings of the International Semantic Web Conference, Monterey, CA, USA.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-030-00668-6_8"},{"key":"ref_16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Sure, Y., Bloehdorn, S., Haase, P., Hartmann, J., and Oberle, D. (2005, January 5\u20138). The SWRC ontology\u2013semantic web for research communities. Proceedings of the Portuguese Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Covilh\u00e3, Portugal.","DOI":"10.1007\/11595014_22"},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"5","DOI":"10.1504\/IJMSO.2014.059142","article-title":"Research information management: The CERIF approach","volume":"9","author":"Jeffery","year":"2014","journal-title":"Int. J. Metadata Semant. Ontol."},{"key":"ref_18","unstructured":"Das, S., Sundara, S., and Cyganiak, R. (2022, September 15). R2RML: RDB to RDF Mapping Language. W3C Recommendation, W3C. Available online: http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/r2rml\/."},{"key":"ref_19","unstructured":"Dimou, A., Vander Sande, M., Colpaert, P., Verborgh, R., Mannens, E., and Van de Walle, R. (2014, January 8). RML: A generic language for integrated RDF mappings of heterogeneous data. Proceedings of the Ldow, Seoul, Korea."},{"key":"ref_20","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Kalayc\u0131, E.G., Grangel Gonz\u00e1lez, I., L\u00f6sch, F., Xiao, G., Kharlamov, E., and Calvanese, D. (2020, January 2\u20136). Semantic integration of Bosch manufacturing data using virtual knowledge graphs. Proceedings of the International Semantic Web Conference, Athens, Greece.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-030-62466-8_29"},{"key":"ref_21","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"471","DOI":"10.3233\/SW-160217","article-title":"Ontop: Answering SPARQL queries over relational databases","volume":"8","author":"Calvanese","year":"2017","journal-title":"Semant. Web"},{"key":"ref_22","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Xiao, G., Lanti, D., Kontchakov, R., Komla-Ebri, S., G\u00fczel-Kalayc\u0131, E., Ding, L., Corman, J., Cogrel, B., Calvanese, D., and Botoeva, E. (2020, January 2\u20136). The virtual knowledge graph system ontop. Proceedings of the International Semantic Web Conference, Athens, Greece.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-030-62466-8_17"},{"key":"ref_23","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Rojas, J.A., Aguado, M., Vasilopoulou, P., Velitchkov, I., Assche, D.V., Colpaert, P., and Verborgh, R. (2021, January 24\u201328). Leveraging Semantic Technologies for Digital Interoperability in the European Railway Domain. Proceedings of the International Semantic Web Conference, Virtual.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-030-88361-4_38"},{"key":"ref_24","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Heyvaert, P., De Meester, B., Dimou, A., and Verborgh, R. (2018, January 3\u20137). Declarative rules for linked data generation at your fingertips!. Proceedings of the European Semantic Web Conference, Anissaras, Greece.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-319-98192-5_40"},{"key":"ref_25","unstructured":"(2022, October 01). RMLMapper Implementation. Available online: https:\/\/github.com\/RMLio\/rmlmapper-java."},{"key":"ref_26","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"201","DOI":"10.1162\/dint_a_00011","article-title":"Virtual knowledge graphs: An overview of systems and use cases","volume":"1","author":"Xiao","year":"2019","journal-title":"Data Intell."},{"key":"ref_27","unstructured":"Chaves-Fraga, D., Priyatna, F., Santana-P\u00e9rez, I., and Corcho, O. (2018). Virtual statistics knowledge graph generation from CSV files. Emerging Topics in Semantic Technologies, IOS Press."},{"key":"ref_28","unstructured":"Arenas-Guerrero, J., Chaves-Fraga, D., Toledo, J., P\u00e9rez, M.S., and Corcho, O. Morph-KGC: Scalable Knowledge Graph Materialization with Mapping Partitions. Semant. Web J., 2022."},{"key":"ref_29","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Iglesias, E., Jozashoori, S., Chaves-Fraga, D., Collarana, D., and Vidal, M.E. (2020, January 19\u201323). SDM-RDFizer: An RML interpreter for the efficient creation of RDF knowledge graphs. Proceedings of the 29th ACM International Conference on Information & Knowledge Management, Virtual.","DOI":"10.1145\/3340531.3412881"},{"key":"ref_30","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Heling, L., Bensmann, F., Zapilko, B., Acosta, M., and Sure-Vetter, Y. (2019, January 2\u20136). Building knowledge graphs from survey data: A use case in the social sciences (extended version). Proceedings of the European Semantic Web Conference, Portoro\u017e, Slovenia.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-030-32327-1_48"},{"key":"ref_31","unstructured":"Liu, Z., Shi, M., Janowicz, K., Regalia, B., Delbecque, S., Mai, G., Zhu, R., and Hitzler, P. (June, January 29). LD Connect: A Linked Data Portal for IOS Press Scientometrics. Proceedings of the European Semantic Web Conference, Hersonissos, Greece."},{"key":"ref_32","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Shen, Y., Chen, Z., Cheng, G., and Qu, Y. (2021, January 24\u201328). CKGG: A Chinese knowledge graph for high-school geography education and beyond. Proceedings of the International Semantic Web Conference, Virtual.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-030-88361-4_25"},{"key":"ref_33","unstructured":"Iglesias-Molina, A., Chaves-Fraga, D., Priyatna, F., and Corcho, O. (2019, January 9\u201312). Enhancing the Maintainability of the Bio2RDF Project Using Declarative Mappings. Proceedings of the SWAT4HCLS, Edinburgh, UK."},{"key":"ref_34","unstructured":"(2022, September 03). Information Artifact Ontology (OBO-IAO). Available online: https:\/\/obofoundry.org\/ontology\/iao.html."},{"key":"ref_35","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Garijo, D. (2017, January 21\u201325). WIDOCO: A wizard for documenting ontologies. Proceedings of the International Semantic Web Conference, Vienna, Austria.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-319-68204-4_9"},{"key":"ref_36","unstructured":"(2022, October 13). Hercules Ontology Network (ROH). Available online: http:\/\/w3id.org\/roh\/."},{"key":"ref_37","first-page":"1","article-title":"VIVO: A semantic approach to scholarly networking and discovery","volume":"7","author":"Conlon","year":"2012","journal-title":"Synth. Lect. Semant. Web Theory Technol."},{"key":"ref_38","unstructured":"Chaves-Fraga, D. (2022, June 13). oeg-upm\/owl2yarrrml. Available online: https:\/\/doi.org\/10.5281\/zenodo.5603173."},{"key":"ref_39","unstructured":"Meester, B.D., Maroy, W., Dimou, A., Verborgh, R., and Mannens, E. (June, January 28). Declarative Data Transformations for Linked Data Generation: The Case of DBpedia. Proceedings of the European Semantic Web Conference, Portoro\u017e, Slovenia."},{"key":"ref_40","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"869","DOI":"10.3233\/SW-210432","article-title":"Enhancing virtual ontology based access over tabular data with Morph-CSV","volume":"12","author":"Ruckhaus","year":"2021","journal-title":"Semant. Web"},{"key":"ref_41","unstructured":"Chaves, D., Do\u00f1a, D., Guerrero, J.A., and Corcho, O. (2022, October 10). oeg-upm\/yarrrml-translator. Available online: https:\/\/doi.org\/10.5281\/zenodo.7024500."},{"key":"ref_42","unstructured":"(2022, September 03). Hercules Ontology Network Compentency Questions. Available online: https:\/\/github.com\/HerculesCRUE\/ROH\/tree\/main\/validation-questions\/sparql-query."},{"key":"ref_43","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"100655","DOI":"10.1016\/j.websem.2021.100655","article-title":"Crossing the chasm between ontology engineering and application development: A survey","volume":"70","author":"Garijo","year":"2021","journal-title":"J. Web Semant."},{"key":"ref_44","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-031-01918-0","article-title":"Web Data APIs for Knowledge Graphs: Easing Access to Semantic Data for Application Developers","volume":"12","author":"Lisena","year":"2021","journal-title":"Synth. Lect. Data Semant. Knowl."},{"key":"ref_45","unstructured":"Badenes-Olmedo, C., Espinoza-Arias, P., and Corcho, O. (2021, January 24\u201328). R4R: Template-based REST API Framework for RDF Knowledge Graphs. Proceedings of the ISWC (Demos\/Industry), Virtual."},{"key":"ref_46","unstructured":"Chaves-Fraga, D., and Dimou, A. (2022, January 30). Declarative Description of Knowledge Graphs Construction Automation: Status & Challenges. Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Knowledge Graph Construction, Crete, Greek."},{"key":"ref_47","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Jozashoori, S., Chaves-Fraga, D., Iglesias, E., Vidal, M.E., and Corcho, O. (2020, January 2\u20136). Funmap: Efficient Execution of Functional Mappings for Knowledge Graph Creation. Proceedings of the International Semantic Web Conference, Athens, Greece.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-030-62419-4_16"},{"key":"ref_48","unstructured":"Iglesias-Molina, A., Pozo-Gilo, L., Dona, D., Ruckhaus, E., Chaves-Fraga, D., and Corcho, O. (2020, January 1\u20136). Mapeathor: Simplifying the specification of declarative rules for knowledge graph construction. Proceedings of the ISWC (Demos\/Industry), Virtual."},{"key":"ref_49","unstructured":"Brunner, U., and Stockinger, K. (April, January 30). Entity matching with transformer architectures-a step forward in data integration. Proceedings of the International Conference on Extending Database Technology, Copenhagen, Denmark."},{"key":"ref_50","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Heling, L., and Acosta, M. (2022, January 25\u201329). Federated SPARQL Query Processing over Heterogeneous Linked Data Fragments. Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 2022, Virtual.","DOI":"10.1145\/3485447.3511947"},{"key":"ref_51","unstructured":"Manghi, P., Bardi, A., Atzori, C., Baglioni, M., Manola, N., Schirrwagen, J., Principe, P., Artini, M., Becker, A., and De Bonis, M. (2019). The OpenAIRE research graph data model. Zenodo."}],"container-title":["Information"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2078-2489\/13\/12\/562\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T01:30:21Z","timestamp":1760146221000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2078-2489\/13\/12\/562"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2022,11,30]]},"references-count":51,"journal-issue":{"issue":"12","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2022,12]]}},"alternative-id":["info13120562"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/info13120562","relation":{},"ISSN":["2078-2489"],"issn-type":[{"value":"2078-2489","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2022,11,30]]}}}