SWC Banner
Home | Sponsor

This is an archive of the Semantic Web Challenge website 2010 - 2015.

See also: current Semantic Web Challenge homepage.

What is the Semantic Web Challenge?

The central idea of the Semantic Web is to extend the current human-readable web by encoding some of the semantics of resources in a machine-processable form. Moving beyond syntax opens the door to more advanced applications and functionality on the Web. Computers will be better able to search, process, integrate and present the content of these resources in a meaningful, intelligent manner.

The core technological building blocks are now in place and widely available: ontology languages, flexible storage and querying facilities, reasoning engines, etc. Standards and guidelines for best practice are being formulated and disseminated by the W3C.

The Semantic Web Challenge offers participants the chance to show the best of the Semantic Web. The Challenge thus serves several purposes:

  • Helps us illustrate to society what the Semantic Web can provide;
  • Gives researchers an opportunity to showcase their work and compare it to others;
  • Stimulates current research to a higher final goal by showing the state-of-the-art every year.

What is the goal?

The overall objective of the challenge is to apply Semantic Web techniques in building online end-user applications that integrate, combine and deduce information needed to assist users in performing tasks. Intentionally, the challenge does not define specific task, data set, application domain or technology to be used because the potential applicability of the Semantic Web is very broad. Instead, a number of minimal criteria have been defined which allow people to submit a broad range of applications. In addition to the criteria, a number of specific desires have been formulated. The more desires are met by the application, the higher the score will be.

How is the challenge organized?

The Semantic Web Challenge is advised by a board of experts working at universities and in industry. The advisory board also act as a jury and award the best applications at the yearly International Semantic Web Conference.

The Challenge has been administered by various people over the years. Please refer to the individual Semantic Web Challenge for the respective page. Further, the Challenge would not be possible without the generous support of our sponsor. For more information, see Sponsor.