W3C Fellow for XBRL and the Semantic Web

JustSystems have kindly agreed to sponsor me as a W3C Fellow for work on XBRL and the Semantic Web. XBRL gives precise semantics to financial reports and has the backing of financial institutions around the world. There is tremendous potential for combining XBRL with the Semantic Web as a means to support the analysis and exploration of huge amounts of financial data. I hope to explore this potential in collaboration with XBRL International, the research groups working in this area, and the many individuals and companies interested in XBRL. Some of the things under consideration include open source tools, ontologies for relating XBRL taxonomies, and an exploration of ramifications for both XBRL and the Semantic Web, e.g. provenance and authenticity, the closed world assumption, and mathematical relationships within financial data. A likely starting point could be the launch of an Interest Group or even an Incubator Group to explore possible standardization activities complementing the role of XBRL International.