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The "arrival" of the Semantic Web has been for long announced by researchers and enthusiasts. The original vision, imagined by the creator of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, portrays a world where the creative power of human beings and the large processing power of machines unite into a hybrid social network of human and artificial agents. So far, nothing that resembles this vision that some qualify as a "technological utopia" has been reached, but the Semantic Web community cannot be blamed for the lack of activity. During the last couple of years, several ontologies have been developed, and standards have been set, bringing the Semantic Web to a level of stability that has never been experienced before.
One of the "overlays" that has always been present in the "traditional web" was that of "networks of researchers", or "scientific networks". Though highly interleaved in the Web of documents, these communities have used the WWW since its beginnings, as a way to share publications, and other rele- vant information. Nowadays, with the emergence of the Semantic Web, these net works of researchers have a unique opportunity to establish stronger con- nections, by using their own information for their benefit.
This document provides an overview over the Semantic Web, the technolo- gies that make possible its implementation, and the different repositories of information that it provides to its users. After this introduction, the focus is placed on the application of Semantic Web technologies to the construction of "Semantic Scientific Networks", or "Scientific Webs", Several different on- tologies and data sources (connected to this subject) are presented, as well as possible ways to articulate them.
An experimental framework for making data from Object Oriented Databases available a RDF, called OUR SE, is introduced as well. OURSE is used as a tool to make information about scientific conferences, present in the Indico conference management system (developed by CERN), available as RDF. Finally, the idea of a "mashup" platform, called Scio, targeted at integrating all the information concerning these "networks" is presented, as well as some design issues that would arise in a possible implementation.