The Application of Linked Data for the visibility of Moroccan Scientific Publications

Abstract

Environmental research plays a central role in addressing global challenges such as climate change, pollution and ecosystem degradation. However, the visibility and interoperability of scientific publications from the Global South, particularly Morocco, remain limited due to absence of dedicated dispositive and open repositories, along with the insufficient adoption of international standards. This study applies Semantic Web and Linked Data technologies to improve the discoverability and reuse of Moroccan environmental publications. A methodological framework was developed combining a literature review, a comparative study of semantic web tools (Protégé, VocBench, RDFlib, RMLMapper, Open Refine, Apache Jena Fuseki, GraphDB and Virtuoso), and an experimental implementation on a corpus of 27 open access articles. The proof of concept generated an RDF knowledge graph comprising 1120 triples. This structure supported advanced SPARQL queries and demonstrated improvements in resource discoverability, semantic interconnection and metadata enrichment. The corpus analysis showed complete metadata coverage, with all records including DOIs, publication years and institutional affiliations. It revealed a sparse but structured graph (density= 0.007), where research outputs were largely oriented toward climate change (85%) and water-related topics (52%). The results highlight the feasibility of lightweight, open-source solutions as the proof of concept was achieved with modest resources and standard open-source tools, yet still delivered metadata enrichment and advanced querying. The findings also emphasize the strategic importance of developing national ontologies, dedicated triple stores, and infrastructures aligned with FAIR principles. This approach provides a transferable model for Southern countries aiming to improve the international visibility of their scientific production.