Scholarly Ontology: modelling scholarly practices

In this paper we present the Scholarly Ontology (SO), an ontology for modelling scholarly practices, inspired by business process modelling and Cultural-Historical Activity Theory. The SO is based on empirical research and earlier models and is designed so as to incorporate related works through a modular structure. The SO is an elaboration of the domain-independent core part of the NeDiMAH Methods Ontology addressing the scholarly ecosystem of Digital Humanities. It thus provides a basis for developing domain-specific scholarly work ontologies springing from a common root. We define the basic concepts of the model and their semantic relations through four complementary perspectives on scholarly work: activity, procedure, resource and agency. As a use case we present a modelling example and argue on the purpose of use of the model through the presentation of indicative SPRQL and SQWRL queries that highlight the benefits of its serialization in RDFS. The SO includes an explicit treatment of intentionality and its interplay with functionality, captured by different parts of the model. We discuss the role of types as the semantic bridge between those two parts and explore several patterns that can be exploited in designing reusable access structures and conformance rules. Related taxonomies and ontologies and their possible reuse within the framework of SO are reviewed.