authorof

authorof is a relational predicate used in information science and knowledge graphs to express that a specific agent is the author of a given work. In graph-based metadata, the subject of a triple is the author (a person, organization, or other agent) and the object is the work they authored. The predicate can be applied to books, articles, software, artworks, and other creative outputs, and may be augmented with qualifiers such as attribution date or edition.

Usage and semantics: The exact interpretation of authorof can vary by dataset. It is commonly used as a convenience alternative to linking the work to its author via an author property; some datasets prefer isAuthorOf or hasAuthor, which invert the subject–object relation. In RDF or OWL, authorof can be defined with domain as Agent and range as CreativeWork, and often paired with provenance properties to record timing and source.

Limitations and considerations: Authorship is frequently multivalued and collaborative. Therefore, authorof is typically used with qualifiers indicating the role, order, or contribution of each author. Different ontologies may model authorship differently, so documentation should specify the intended direction and semantics. Related concepts include author, creator, attribution, and standard vocabularies such as Dublin Core or schema.org.