"Web Science, therefore, is not just about methods for modeling, analyzing and understanding the Web at the various micro- and macroscopic levels. It is also about engineering protocols and providing infrastructure, and ensuring that there is fit between the infrastructure and the society that hosts it. Web Science must coordinate engineering with a social agenda, policy with technical constraints and possibilities, analysis with synthesis - it is inherently interdisciplinary, and this text is structured to reflect that."

List of concepts:

• A. General
  • A.1 Instructional exposition
  • A.2 Research exposition
  • A.3 General and miscellaneous specific topics
  • A.4 Conference proceedings and collections of papers
• B. Web History and Methodology
  • B.1 General Web History and Methodology
  • B.2 Web history
    • B.2.1 Web Forerunners
    • B.2.2 Biographies and related stories
    • B.2.99 Other in Web history
  • B.3 Web Science Theory and Epistemology
    • B.3.1 Two Magics of Web Science
    • B.3.2 Actor Network Theory
    • B.3.99 Other in Web Science Theory and Epistemology
• C. Web Technologies
  • C.1 General Web Technologies
  • C.2 Web Milieux
    • C.2.1 Document technologies
    • C.2.2 Hypertext technologies (See also: E.2.10 Mass media)
    • C.2.3 Internet technologies
    • C.2.4 Mobile Web technologies (See also: E.1.1.6 Web-based economic development)
    • C.2.5 Grid and Cloud computing technologies
    • C.2.99 Other in Web Milieux
  • C.3 Basic Web Architecture
    • C.3.1 HTTP and related technologies
    • C.3.2 URIs
    • C.3.3 HTML, XML, CSS and related technologies
    • C.3.4 Interfaces and Browsers
    • C.3.5 Servers
    • C.3.6 Web Services
    • C.3.99 Other in Basic Web Architecture
  • C.4 Web 2.0 technologies (See also: E.2.2 Mass phenomena)
  • C.5 Semantic Web/Linked Data (See also: D.2.2 Logic and Inference in the Web, D.2.5 Web as a Complex System, Graphs, Networks, Games, E.1.1.6 Web-based economic development)
    • C.5.1 Metadata
    • C.5.2 Knowledge Representation
    • C.5.3 Ontology Languages
    • C.5.4 Linked Data
    • C.5.5 Natural Language Processing
    • C.5.6 Provenance systems in the Web
    • C.5.99 Other in Semantic Web/Linked Data
  • C.6 Internet/Web of Things
• D. Web Analysis
  • D.1 General Web Analysis
  • D.2 Mathematical Methods of Web analysis
    • D.2.1 Web data sampling and analytics
    • D.2.2 Logic and Inference in the Web (See also: C.5 Semantic Web/Linked Data)
    • D.2.3 Statistical Inference in the Web
    • D.2.4 Statistical Analysis of the Web
    • D.2.5 Web as a Complex System, Graphs, Networks, Games (See also: C.5 Semantic Web/Linked Data, E.1.2.3 Advertising in the Web, sponsored search, E.2.1 Social networks)
    • D.2.6 Mathematical methods for describing Web services
    • D.2.7 Crawling, Indexing and Searching
    • D.2.8 Data Mining, Information Retrieval and Machine Learning
    • D.2.9 Other Algorithms for the Web
    • D.2.99 Other in Mathematical Methods of Web analysis
• E. Web Society
  • E.1 Economics and Business
    • E.1.1 Economics
      • E.1.1.1 Goods in the Web
      • E.1.1.2 The Web economy (See also: E.2.4 Peer production)
      • E.1.1.3 Economics of security, privacy and trust (See also: E.6.2.2 Privacy, E.6.2.3 Trust, E.6.2.4 Security)
      • E.1.1.4 Antitrust Issues and Policies in the Web
      • E.1.1.5 Intellectual property and digital rights management (See also: E.5.2 Digital Rights Management)
      • E.1.1.6 Web-based economic development (See also: C.2.4 Mobile Web technologies, C.5 Semantic Web/Linked Data)
      • E.1.1.99 Other in Economics
    • E.1.2 Business
      • E.1.2.1 E-commerce
      • E.1.2.2 Business models in the Web
      • E.1.2.3 Advertising in the Web, sponsored search (See also: D.2.5 Web as a Complex System, Graphs, Networks, Games)
      • E.1.2.99 Other in Business
  • E.2 Social Engagement and Social Science
    • E.2.1 Social networks (See also: D.2.5 Web as a Complex System, Graphs, Networks, Games, E.2.7 Virtual communities, groups and identity)
    • E.2.2 Mass phenomena (See also: C.4 Web 2.0 technologies)
    • E.2.3 Collective intelligence
    • E.2.4 Peer production (See also: E.1.1.2 The Web economy)
    • E.2.5 Globalization
    • E.2.6 Systems, Social structures and processes
    • E.2.7 Virtual communities, groups and identity (See also: E.2.1 Social networks)
    • E.2.8 Social capital and power inequality in the Web
    • E.2.9 On-line lives, intergenerational differences
    • E.2.10 Mass media (See also: C.2.2 Hypertext technologies)
    • E.2.99 Other in Social Engagement and Social Science
  • E.3 Personal Engagement and Psychology
    • E.3.1 System Psychology and Behavior
    • E.3.2 Child and adolescent psychiatry
    • E.3.3 Tele-working
    • E.3.99 Other in Personal Engagement and Psychology
  • E.4 Philosophy
    • E.4.1 Philosophy of information
    • E.4.2 Objects, Reference and Cognition in the Web
    • E.4.3 Ethics in the Web
    • E.4.99 Other in Philosophy
  • E.5 Law
    • E.5.1 Intellectual Property in the Web
    • E.5.2 Digital Rights Management (See also: E.1.1.5 Intellectual property and digital rights management)
    • E.5.3 Digital crime
    • E.5.4 Laws for Web access
    • E.5.5 Antitrust Law
    • E.5.99 Other in Law
  • E.6 Politics and Governance
    • E.6.1 Political science
      • E.6.1.1 E-Government
      • E.6.1.2 E-Politics
      • E.6.1.3 E-Democracy
      • E.6.1.99 Other in Political science
    • E.6.2 Policy and Regulation
      • E.6.2.1 Web Governance
      • E.6.2.2 Privacy (See also: E.1.1.3 Economics of security, privacy and trust)
      • E.6.2.3 Trust (See also: E.1.1.3 Economics of security, privacy and trust)
      • E.6.2.4 Security (See also: E.1.1.3 Economics of security, privacy and trust)
      • E.6.2.5 Network neutrality
      • E.6.2.6 E-Inclusion
      • E.6.2.99 Other in Policy and Regulation
    • E.6.99 Other in Politics and Governance
  • E.99 Other in Web Society
• F. Teaching the Web
  • F.1 Teaching the Web - General
  • F.2 Pre-college teaching
  • F.3 Undergraduate teaching
  • F.4 Graduate teaching

Purpose:

The Web Science Subject Categorization (WSSC) system aims to facilitate communication and collaboration among scholars of the Web from various perspectives i.e. computational, mathematical, social, economic and legal. WSSC 2010 is by no means "written in stone" and must be considered as the very first attempt to discuss a Science Subject Categorization for the Web ecosystem as a central subject of study.

Practically, every discipline is focusing its research efforts on the most important issues during specific periods of time. Today, economists put their efforts to discover new ways for estimating systemic risk because of the severe financial crisis, biologists try to find new personalized cures to diseases after encoding DNA and so forth. Concerning the Web ecosystem, scholars are facing two major challenges:

1. to preserve and expand the fundamental right of equal and universal online access to information against restrictive political actions and oligopolic business practices and
2. to accelerate socio-economic development by facilitating life-critical functions in the developing world and by enabling the publication, interlink and re-use of valuable datasets in the developed world.

Structure:

The basic inputs for this version of the proposed Web Science Subject Categorization (WSSC) are related classification systems and Web Science and WWW conferences. In the definitions, references to other classification systems are enclosed in square brackets, indicating the target classification with the following shortcuts:

• ACM: computing http://www.acm.org/about/class/1998/
• AMS: mathematics http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/msc/msc2010.html
• JEL: economics http://www.aeaweb.org/journal/jel_class_system.php
• SOCIO: Sociological Abstracts Classification Scheme http://www.csa.com/factsheets/supplements/saclass.php
• POLI: Political Science Abstracts Classification Scheme http://info.csa.com/political/classcodes.shtml

The General (A) category refers to Instructional and Research exposition, Conference proceedings and collections of papers. The Web History and Methodology (B) category includes Web history, related biographies and epistemological and theoretical models of the Web artifact.

The Web is an application that runs on the Internet and the progress of the latter is crucial to the Web's universal role. It is vital for innovation that Internet and the Web work together but advance independently [1]. The Web Technologies (C) section categorizes the underlying infrastructure (Web Milieux and Basic Web Architecture) and the major enabling technologies for each Web era, namely Web 2.0, Semantic Web/Linked Data and Web of Things.

The class of scale-free networks, massively analyzed and used in various disciplines and applications during the last five years, was initially discovered in Internet and Web networks of real data [2]. The Web Analysis (D) category refers to the Mathematical Methods applied in the Web. The Web Society (E) category represents the following perspectives: Economic and Business analysis, Social Engagement and Social Science, Personal Engagement and Psychology, Philosophy, Law and Politics and Governance.

Introductory computer science school and university courses on the topic of the Web are often out of date, remaining stuck on the utilitarian prospect of Web technologies. In this aspect, Web Science education should address the complex techno-social issues of the Web in an attractive and compatible way to modern real phenomena and other scientific approaches. Pre-college, Undergraduate and Graduate teaching of the Web are contained in the Teaching the Web (F) category.

[1] Berners-Lee, T. (22 November 2010). "Long Live the Web". Scientific American.

[2] Barabasi, A.-L., & Albert, R. (January 01, 1999). Emergence of Scaling in Random Networks. Science, Vol. 286 no. 5439 pp. 509-512.

Using the Subject Categorization in Your Work

The Web Science Subject Categorization (webscience.org/2010/SubjectCategorization) is a tree-based classification of topics for scientific activities related to the Web, aimed to facilitate communication and collaboration among scholars of the Web from various perspectives i.e. computational, mathematical, social, economic and legal. The basic purpose of the WSSC is to support the indexing and search for publications about a given topic.

Formatting Instructions:

Every Web-related scientific activity (esp. conferences, courses, journals, publications etc.) should reference the relevant WSSC category (or multiple categories) in the latest categorization (currently the 2010 version). The references should be placed before the main text of the publication (usually after the title and abstract, but before the introductory section) and have the following form:

WSSC: webscience.org/2010/E.2.1 Social networks; webscience.org/2010/E.5.1 Intellectual Property in the Web; webscience.org/2010/C.5.4 Linked Data

Alternative format with each category on a new line (for example to limit wrapping in a two-column layout):

WSSC:
webscience.org/2010/E.2.1 Social networks;
webscience.org/2010/E.5.1 Intellectual Property in the Web;
webscience.org/2010/C.5.4 Linked Data

The order of the categories should start from the most relevant one.

The "webscience.org/version/code" links should be spelled out in full as shown, and they should be clickable hyperlinks where applicable (in HTML, PDF, and other formats that support hyperlinking). The inclusion of hyperlinks will allow the use of generic search engines to find publications relevant to a topic by asking for documents that link to the topic, while writing the links in full in the text will support their function even in printed publications, or where hyperlinking is not available (e.g. in plain-text publications).

Credits:

The Web Science Subject Categorization (WSSC) has been originated and created by Michalis Vafopoulos. The valuable contribution of many Web scholars is highly appreciated. Fruitful discussions and input from K. O’Hara, L. Carr, I. Antoniou, G. Metakides and I. Anagnostopoulos are gratefully acknowledged. I would like to especially thank J. Kopecky for his excellent work in the SKOS file and the Web pages. The contributions of A. Dimou in the creation of the initial wiki file and of C. Gutteridge in the delivery and maintenance of the present Web site are gratefully acknowledged. 

Suggested Citation:

Vafopoulos, M. Web Science Subject Categorization (WSSC). The Web Science Trust, 2011. http://webscience.org/2010/wssc.html.

Download reference as: BibTeX, Endnote.

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Table of contents —

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Table of contents — A. General —

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Table of contents — B. Web History and Methodology —

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Table of contents — B. Web History and Methodology — B.2 Web history —

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Table of contents — B. Web History and Methodology — B.3 Web Science Theory and Epistemology —

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Table of contents — C. Web Technologies —

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Table of contents — C. Web Technologies — C.2 Web Milieux —

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Table of contents — C. Web Technologies — C.3 Basic Web Architecture —

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Table of contents — D. Web Analysis —

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Table of contents — D. Web Analysis — D.2 Mathematical Methods of Web analysis —

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Table of contents — E. Web Society —

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Table of contents — E. Web Society — E.1 Economics and Business —

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Table of contents — E. Web Society — E.4 Philosophy —

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Table of contents — E. Web Society — E.6 Politics and Governance — E.6.1 Political science —

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Table of contents — F. Teaching the Web —

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