Stratifying Semantic Data for Citation and Trust: An Introduction to RDFDF

In this paper we analyse the functional requirements of linked data citation and identify a minimal set of operations and primitives needed to realise such task. Citing linked data implies solving a series of data provenance issues and finding a way to identify data subsets. Those two tasks can be handled defining a simple type system inside data and verifying it with a type checker, which is significantly less complex than interpreting reified RDF statements and can be implemented in a non data invasive way. Finally we suggest that data citation should be handled outside of the data, and propose a simple language to describe RDF documents where separation between data and metainformation is explicitly specified.