The euBusinessGraph Ontology: a Lightweight Ontology for Harmonizing Basic Company Information

Submitted by Dumitru Roman on 11/05/2020 - 06:24

Tracking #: 2616-3830

Authors: 
Dumitru Roman
Vladimir Alexiev
Javier Paniagua
Brian Elvesæter
Bjørn Marius von Zernichow
Ahmet Soylu
Boyan Simeonov
Chris Taggart

Responsible editor: 
Oscar Corcho

Submission type: 
Ontology Description
Abstract: 
Company data, ranging from basic company information such as company name(s) and incorporation date to complex balance sheets and personal data about directors and shareholders, are the foundation that many data value chains depend upon in various sectors (e.g., business information, marketing and sales, etc.). Company data becomes a valuable asset when data is collected and integrated from a variety of sources, both authoritative (e.g., national business registers) and non-authoritative (e.g., company websites). Company data integration is however a difficult task primarily due to the heterogeneity and complexity of company data, and the lack of generally agreed upon semantic descriptions of the concepts in this domain. In this article, we introduce the euBusinessGraph ontology as a lightweight mechanism for harmonising company data for the purpose of aggregating, linking, provisioning and analysing basic company data. The article provides an overview of the related work, ontology scope, ontology development process, explanations of core concepts and relationships, and the implementation of the ontology. Furthermore, we present scenarios where the ontology was used, among others, for publishing company data (business knowledge graph) and for comparing data from various company data providers. The euBusinessGraph ontology serves as an asset not only for enabling various tasks related to company data but also on which various extensions can be built upon.
Full PDF Version: 
PDF icon swj2616.pdf
Previous Version: 
The euBusinessGraph Ontology: a Lightweight Ontology for Harmonizing Basic Company Information
Tags: 
Reviewed

Decision/Status: 
Accept

Solicited Reviews:
Click to Expand/Collapse
Review #1
Anonymous submitted on 12/Nov/2020
Suggestion:
Accept
Review Comment:

I have already reviewed this paper 4-september 2020. I assume that this is a revision of the paper previously revised. Unfortunately, the changes made are not explicitly stated of highlighted in the paper, which makes the revision difficult.

My previous recommendation was "minor review", so I have revised the changes suggested.
The conclusion section is now more specific and informative.

Sections 2 and 4 have been revised in the lined of my suggestions and now the contrast with previous work and the motivation is more explicit. Section 5 is now much more relevant to practice and contains substantial materialuseful to understand the value of the ontology and the key modeling elements that make it useful.
On the basis of the above comments, my recommendation is now accept.

Review #2
By Vojtěch Svátek submitted on 10/Dec/2020
Suggestion:
Accept
Review Comment:

I appreciate the authors' careful consideration and reflection of the points raised in the previous review. I now consider the paper as ready for publication.

As regards the standard review dimensions:
(1) Quality and relevance of the described ontology (convincing evidence must be provided).
I believe that the ontology is highly relevant and has been developed with care.
(2) Illustration, clarity and readability of the describing paper, which shall convey to the reader the key aspects of the described ontology.
The paper, together with the linked documentation, describes the ontology sufficiently to elucidate its role and structure, and allow its reuse.

I still have some minor recommendations for the final version:
- I would like to see the advantages of the wide direct reuse of existing ontologies, compared to creation of proxies in the new namespace, explicitly, though briefly, discussed in Section 3.3. It is now exclusively devoted to the choice of the schema.org properties, which is however just one aspect of the reuse strategy.
- Similarly, some aspects of the authors' response to the reviewers, dealing with the unavailability of entities for, e.g., 'identifier' or 'web resource', leading to creation of new entities in the ebg namespace, should be put here (Sec. 3.3).
- Table 1 should also contain the totals of entities, and the ebg row could preferably be set in bold or the like, to make it better visible.