For more than 20 years Southampton’s interdisciplinary research team has been exploring the social and technical aspects of the Web. They have a strong depth of knowledge of the technology used to support the Web, as well as a deep understanding of how billions of people across the world use and depend on it for their business, politics and social networking.
The team developed some of the earliest open hypermedia systems, applying these early insights into the Web and the development of the Semantic Web – the conversion of the existing Web into content that can be better interpreted by machines – and published an influential set of basic principles for a Web of Linked Data.
They were instrumental in the foundation of the innovative discipline of Web Science, publishing a paper in top journal Science in 2006 calling for it to be established as an interdisciplinary study of the evolution and impact of the Web.
Southampton researchers have also lead work on establishing open standards to support the incorporation of information about the provenance of data published on the Web to help ensure its quality, reliability and trustworthiness.