Starting point:
Berners-Lee, T., Hendler, J., & Lassila, O. (2001).
The Semantic Web.
Scientific American, 284(5), 28-37.
This is a classic and fundamental reading to be introduced in the Semantic Web realm. The authors build a scenario to illustrate what could be a future with machines participating more of our daily tasks. They are part of a Semantic Web, which they can read, interpret and take decisions.
Recommended reading:
Wang, X., Gorlitsky, R., & Almeida, J. S. (2005).
From XML to RDF: how semantic web technologies will change the design of "omic" standards.
Nat Biotech, 23(9), 1099-1103.
This text analyzes the limitations of XM-based open standards for metadata and shows what RDF can contribute in this sense.
Starting point:
Bizer, C., Heath, T., & Berners-Lee, T. (2009).
Linked Data - The Story So Far.
International Journal on Semantic Web and Information Systems, 5(3), 1-22.
Starting point:
Chandrasekaran, B., Josephson, J. R., & Benjamins, V. R. (1999).
What Are Ontologies, and Why Do We Need Them?
IEEE Intelligent Systems, 14(1), 20-26.
Not so new but still a good introduction to the notion of ontologies and their importance.
Recommended reading:
Ashburner, M., Ball, C. A., Blake, J. A., Botstein, D., Butler, H., Cherry, J. M., ... Sherlock, G. (2000).
Gene Ontology: tool for the unification of biology.
Nature Genetics, 25(1), 25-29.
An introduction to ontologies by example to ontologies - one of the most successful ontologies I know.
Going deeper:
Guarino, N., Oberle, D., & Staab, S. (2009).
What Is an Ontology?
In Handbook on Ontologies (pp. 1-17). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
A chapter that introduces a comprehensive book about ontologies. This chapter is an interesting introduction to ontologies, but with a technical perspective.
Debate:
Smith, B., & Welty, C. (2001).
Ontology: Towards a New Synthesis.
In Proc. of the int. conf. on Formal Ontology in Information Systems - Volume 2001 (pp. 3-9). New York, NY, USA: ACM.
An interesting debate around the diverse interpretations that ontologies took in Computer Science.