Glossary
- Controlled vocabulary
- A set of predefined, consistent terms used to describe specific attributes of legislation, such as document types (e.g. ‘law,’ ‘regulation’), keywords and administrative areas. This ensures legal acts are categorised and retrieved in a uniform manner.
Example: A controlled vocabulary for document types might include terms like ‘directive’, ‘regulation’, and ‘decision’. - ELI (European Legislation Identifier)
- A framework designed to facilitate identifying, referencing and linking legal texts across EU countries.
- ELI Pillar 1
- This first pillar of the ELI framework focuses on the use of standardised uniform resource identifiers (URIs) for legal documents. It sets out how URIs should be structured to identify legislation across jurisdictions in a uniform manner.
Example: The URI structure http://data.europa.eu/eli/dir/2010/30 follows the principles set out in ELI Pillar 1. - ELI Pillar 2
- The second pillar focuses on metadata standards for describing legal documents. It outlines how metadata, such as title, enactment date, type of act and jurisdiction, should be applied to legal texts.
Example: The metadata for an EU directive might include properties like eli:title (the title of the directive) and eli:passed_by (the body that passed the legislation). - ELI Pillar 3
- The third pillar addresses implementing semantic web technologies, such as RDFa and JSON-LD, to embed ELI metadata into web pages. This allows search engines and other systems to interpret and index legal content.
Example: A government website might use RDFa to embed metadata about national laws into its HTML pages to help search engines discover the legislation. - ELI Pillar 4
- The fourth pillar provides guidelines on how an ELI publisher can create and maintain an exhaustive list of ELI identifiers and make these accessible to external clients. It includes mechanisms like sitemaps and RSS feeds for updates.
Example: The Luxembourg government may implement Pillar 4 to ensure its entire body of law is accessible and regularly updated for systems like the N-Lex ELI search engine. - ELI stakeholders
- ELI stakeholders are those implementing ELI. This includes different countries and the Publications Office of the European Union, which uses ELI for EU legislation published on EUR-Lex.
- Format
- In the ELI framework, the Format class refers to the specific technical or physical representation of a legal document. It identifies how a legal expression of a document is packaged in a particular media type, such as PDF, HTML and XML. The Format class is crucial for distinguishing between different ways in which the same legislative content is made available to users, whether digitally or in print.
- By specifying the format, ELI ensures that legal documents are accurately categorised and accessible in various formats, facilitating better interoperability and accessibility across legal systems.
Example: A directive may be available as an HTML web page for online reading or as a downloadable PDF file. Both share the same legal content but differ in Format, which is specified in the ELI metadata using the eli:format property. - FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records)
- A conceptual model developed by the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) to provide a structured framework for understanding and describing the relationships between various forms and versions of bibliographic resources. FRBR identifies four distinct entities –Work, Expression, Manifestation, and Item – to represent the different stages from the abstract concept of a work to physical copies of it. This model helps catalogue, organise and retrieve bibliographic data in libraries, archives, and other information systems.
- Work: The abstract intellectual or artistic creation (e.g. the idea of Romeo and Juliet).
- Expression: The specific realisation of a work, such as a translation or adaptation (e.g. a Greek translation of Romeo and Juliet).
- Manifestation: The physical or digital form of an expression (e.g. a printed book or an e-book edition of Romeo and Juliet).
- Item: A single exemplar of a manifestation, like a specific copy of the book (e.g. a particular library’s edition of Romeo and Juliet).
- FRBR helps users find, identify, select, and obtain bibliographic materials more efficiently in library catalogues and information retrieval systems.
- JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data)
- A format for linked data (semantic metadata) using JSON, which is widely used in web development. JSON-LD can be added to web pages to encode information about legal documents, enabling search engines to interpret the page content effectively.
Example: A JSON-LD script in a web page about EU legislation might include fields for the legislation’s type, title, enactment date and a link to its full text. - LegalExpression
- In the ELI framework, this is a more concrete manifestation of a LegalResource, such as a specific version or linguistic variant. LegalExpressions may vary based on publication dates, language or format (e.g. PDF or HTML).
Example: A LegalResource could have multiple LegalExpressions, such as a French version of a directive in PDF format or an English version in HTML format. - LegalResource
- This term in the ELI framework refers to a legal document without considering its specific format or version. It is an abstract concept that covers all instances of a legal act (e.g. different languages, formats).
Example: The ‘LegalResource’ for a directive may refer to the directive as a whole, regardless of its publication date or language. - Metadata
- Data that provides information about other data. In the ELI framework, metadata describes the properties of legal documents (such as title, type, publication date and jurisdiction), and makes it easier to retrieve and categorise the documents.
Example: Metadata for a piece of legislation may include its title, the date of enactment and the type of law it represents (e.g. regulation, directive). - N-Lex
- N-Lex is a single interface that makes it possible to search and access national law from national official databases. This is thanks to connectors that are developed and maintained by Member States in close collaboration with the Publications Office of the European Union.
- The interface will integrate a search based on ELI so that it is even easier to access national legislation, unlocking the full potential of ELI.
Example: A user might use N-Lex to find all national laws transposing a specific EU directive across several Member States. - Ontology
- In the ELI framework, an ontology is a formal description of how legal information is categorised and related. The ELI ontology helps structure and link legal data, enabling different systems to interpret and exchange legislative metadata efficiently.
Example: The ELI ontology can define relationships like ‘amends’ or ‘is consolidated by’ between legal acts. - RDFa (Resource Description Framework in attributes)
- A standard for embedding structured metadata in HTML documents using attributes. This allows web pages to carry rich semantic information about their content, making it easier for machines (like search engines) to parse and interpret them.
Example: Embedding RDFa metadata in an HTML page about a French law would involve attributes that specify the law’s title, publication date and type in a machine-readable format. - RSS Atom Feed
- A web feed that automatically updates subscribers about changes or new entries. ELI uses RSS Atom feeds to notify users of updates in legal databases, such as newly published laws or amendments.
Example: A lawyer might subscribe to an RSS feed to receive notifications whenever new legislation is published in their jurisdiction. - Schema.org
- A collaborative initiative supported by major search engines (Google, Bing, etc.) that defines schemas for structured data on the web. It helps search engines better interpret metadata. In the context of legislation, Schema.org has an extension to describe legal acts in a way that web crawlers understand.
Example: Using Schema.org vocabulary, you can annotate a web page to signal that it contains a specific law, including attributes like the title, type, date of enactment and jurisdiction. - Sitemap protocol
- A protocol used by websites to inform search engines about the structure of their content, including lists of all URIs for legal documents. ELI requires special sitemaps to ensure that legislative documents are properly indexed and visible.
Example: A sitemap for an official journal might include URIs for all legislative acts published in a particular year. - SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System)
- A standard for controlled vocabularies, taxonomies and thesauri. SKOS is often used to manage lists of terms (like document types or keywords) in a structured way that computers can understand.
Example: The types of documents (law, directive, decision) within the ELI system may be organised and published using SKOS.
Last update: 30/06/2025