Nanopublications as FAIR Digital Object Implementations

Numerous implementations of FAIR Digital Objects (FDOs) are actively emerging and are being evaluated against FDO specifications. Here, we focus on the Nanopublication Framework as a possible implementation of FDOs. Nanopublications are unitary, standardised, and self-contained RDF-based knowledge graphs consisting of three subgraphs: an assertion graph that includes the main content, a provenance metadata graph, and a publication information graph. In a thorough analysis of the FDO specifications (represented by the efforts of the FDO Forum) and based on Semantic Web (represented by the FDO Framework) we demonstrate that the existing Nanopublication Framework aligns with the overall FDO definitions and requirements. We conclude that appropriately designed nanopublications can indeed be deployed as a general purpose FDO implementation. This nanopublication-based FDO approach is initially applied through the extension of a commonly used nanopublication template, now aligned with the FDO Framework. The original template is currently used in realworld applications where communities of practice describe the FAIR Supporting Resources that constitute FAIR Implementation Profiles.