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Ruben Verborgh

Capturing Requests and Context for ODRL-Based Access and Usage Control

Beatriz Esteves, Wout Slabbinck, Y. Sellami, A. Cimmino, V. Rodriguez-Doncel, and Ruben Verborgh

Trusted data exchange between parties requires robust mechanisms for governing how data is requested and accessed in a transparent and accountable manner across contexts. To achieve this, data exchange systems must support the interoperable expression, interpretation, and enforcement of access and usage control policies. While the W3C Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) can capture complex policies for technical, societal and legal requirements, it currently lacks a mechanism to express requests for such data, and the context in which to evaluate the policies and requests. To address this issue, we derived key requirements for policy-based access and usage control systems to specify terms for describing: i) evaluation requests (formal descriptions of requested actions), and ii) the state of the world (knowledge representing real-world information relevant to the evaluation of the target policy or policies). We propose ontology design patterns using these terms to describe evaluation requests and the state of the world, which, in conjunction with policies, are necessary inputs for ODRL evaluators to assess which rules are active and which prohibitions and obligations have been violated or fulfilled. We demonstrate the expressiveness of our approach by analysing its coverage of the ODRL standard: while we conclude that there is no direct 1:1 mapping between ODRL concepts and the proposed request and state of the world terms, full coverage of the ODRL left operand constructs is achievable using the proposed ontology. Hence, our proposal provides the formalism required by ODRL evaluators to represent contextual information as inputs for policy evaluation, which can be used by current state of the art implementations to interoperably interpret and enforce ODRL policies. Future work includes the integration of our approach into the formal semantics work being developed in the context of the W3C ODRL Community Group, as well as its real-world usage in ODRL evaluator implementations.

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Published in 2025 in Proceedings of the 16\textsuperscriptth Workshop on Ontology Design and Patterns.

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Cite this article easily using its BibTeX entry: 

@inproceedings{esteves_wop_2025,
  author = {Esteves, Beatriz and Slabbinck, Wout and Sellami, Y. and Cimmino, A. and Rodriguez-Doncel, V. and Verborgh, Ruben},
  title = {Capturing Requests and Context for {ODRL}-Based Access and Usage Control},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 16\textsuperscript{th} Workshop on Ontology Design and Patterns},
  year = 2025,
  month = nov,
  editor = {Novakazi, Fjoll\"{e} and Dalal, Aryan Singh},
  series = {CEUR Workshop Proceedings},
  volume = 4093,
  issn = {1613-0073},
  publisher = {CEUR},
  pages = {71--84},
  url = {https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-4093/paper5.pdf},
}

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ACM
Beatriz Esteves, Wout Slabbinck, Y. Sellami, A. Cimmino, V. Rodriguez-Doncel, and Ruben Verborgh. 2025. Capturing Requests and Context for ODRL-Based Access and Usage Control. In Proceedings of the 16\textsuperscriptth Workshop on Ontology Design and Patterns (CEUR Workshop Proceedings), CEUR, 71–84.
APA
Esteves, B., Slabbinck, W., Sellami, Y., Cimmino, A., Rodriguez-Doncel, V., & Verborgh, R. (2025). Capturing Requests and Context for ODRL-Based Access and Usage Control. In F. Novakazi & A. S. Dalal (Eds.), Proceedings of the 16\textsuperscriptth Workshop on Ontology Design and Patterns (Vol. 4093, pp. 71–84). CEUR.
IEEE
B. Esteves, W. Slabbinck, Y. Sellami, A. Cimmino, V. Rodriguez-Doncel, and R. Verborgh, “Capturing Requests and Context for ODRL-Based Access and Usage Control,” in Proceedings of the 16\textsuperscriptth Workshop on Ontology Design and Patterns, 2025, vol. 4093, pp. 71–84.
LNCS
Esteves, B., Slabbinck, W., Sellami, Y., Cimmino, A., Rodriguez-Doncel, V., Verborgh, R.: Capturing Requests and Context for ODRL-Based Access and Usage Control. In: Novakazi, F. and Dalal, A.S. (eds.) Proceedings of the 16\textsuperscriptth Workshop on Ontology Design and Patterns. pp. 71–84. CEUR (2025).
MLA
Esteves, Beatriz, et al. “Capturing Requests and Context for ODRL-Based Access and Usage Control.” Proceedings of the 16\Textsuperscriptth Workshop on Ontology Design and Patterns, edited by Fjollë Novakazi and Aryan Singh Dalal, vol. 4093, CEUR, 2025, pp. 71–84.