Review Comment:
This manuscript was submitted as 'full paper' and should be reviewed along the usual dimensions for research contributions which include (1) originality, (2) significance of the results, and (3) quality of writing. Please also assess the data file provided by the authors under “Long-term stable URL for resources”. In particular, assess (A) whether the data file is well organized and in particular contains a README file which makes it easy for you to assess the data, (B) whether the provided resources appear to be complete for replication of experiments, and if not, why, (C) whether the chosen repository, if it is not GitHub, Figshare or Zenodo, is appropriate for long-term repository discoverability, and (4) whether the provided data artifacts are complete. Please refer to the reviewer instructions and the FAQ for further information.
As a full research paper, the manuscript makes an original and relevant contribution. Its principal originality lies in its modelling of the layered structure of classical tafsir (including verse-fragment interpretation, embedded hadith, narrator chains, themes, and named entities) and in its provision of a pipeline for transforming TEI-encoded material into an RDF knowledge graph. The work is significant for Semantic Web research, cultural heritage, Islamic studies, and the digital humanities. The writing and overall presentation have improved substantially.
The manuscript now explicitly identifies OWL 2 DL as the profile used and reports the use of HermiT, Pellet, and FaCT++ for ontology-level validation. It also clearly states that the current implementation does not employ a production-scale reasoner over the populated knowledge graph. This clarification appropriately defines the system’s current reasoning capabilities and avoids overstating the implementation.
The positioning of SemanticTafsir has been significantly improved. The revised manuscript now discusses CIDOC CRM, LRMoo, Quran and hadith ontologies, and literary digital-humanities initiatives. It explains why these resources provide useful modelling patterns but do not collectively capture the combined tafsir-specific requirements addressed by SemanticTafsir. The new alignment section and representative mapping table substantially improve the transparency of the ontology-reuse strategy.
The explanation of the role of hadith in tafsir has also been strengthened. Hadith are now described as interpretive evidence embedded within exegetical discourse and connected to verses, verse fragments, commentary sections, themes, and narrator chains. The expanded captions and accompanying discussions of Figures 2 and 4 resolve the earlier visual ambiguities.
The modelling of narrator types as controlled-value individuals is now adequately justified, and selective links to external Linked Open Data resources are discussed. The evaluation section has also been improved. It now explains that the competency questions were informed by domain requirements, that the TEI/XML corpus was manually annotated and verified by experts, and that query outputs and selected visualisations were reviewed against the source data and ontology design. The authors appropriately acknowledge that no separate benchmark was used and clarify that the evaluation assesses support for retrieval, exploration, and analysis rather than benchmark-based information-extraction accuracy.
Regarding the resources provided, the GitHub repository is appropriate and contains the ontology, knowledge-graph archive, code, competency questions and SPARQL queries, MIRO documentation, conversion notes, and related materials. The artefacts are useful for inspection and reuse and appear, in principle, to be sufficient for rerunning the published SPARQL examples. However, the README could be further expanded to document dependencies, installation procedures, complete execution steps, expected outputs, the contents of the knowledge-graph archive, and the availability of—or access restrictions relating to—the source TEI corpus. The authors could also create an immutable tagged release, preferably archived in a DOI-issuing repository; reconcile the MIT, CC BY, and CC BY-SA licensing statements; correct stale endpoint links; and perform a final OWL 2 DL profile check on the released ontology.
I therefore recommend acceptance, as the manuscript demonstrates strong originality, methodological rigor, and clear relevance across multiple disciplines, making it a valuable and well-executed contribution to the field.
|
