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With the aim of developing a conceptual framework which aims to facilitate semantic metadata interoperability, this paper explores overarching conceptual issues on how traditional library information organisation schemes such as online public access catalogues (OPACs), taxonomies, thesauri, and ontologies on the one hand versus Web 2.0 technologies such as social tagging (folksonomies) can be harnessed to provide users with satisfying experiences.

This paper reviews works in relation to current metadata creation, utilisation and interoperability approaches, focusing on how a social constructivist philosophical perspective can be employed to underpin metadata decisions in digital libraries. Articles are retrieved from databases such as EBSCO host and Emerald and online magazines such as D‐Lib and Ariadne. Books, news articles and blog posts that are deemed relevant are also used to support the arguments put forward in this paper.

Current metadata approaches are deeply authoritative and metadata deployments in digital libraries tend to favour an objectivist approach with focus on metadata simplicity. It is argued that unless information objects are enriched with metadata generated through a collaborative and user‐driven approach, achieving semantic metadata interoperability in digital libraries will remain difficult.

In this paper, it is indicated that the number of metadata elements (fields) constituting a standard has a direct bearing on metadata richness, which in turn directly affects semantic interoperability. It is expected that this paper will contribute towards a better understanding of harnessing user‐driven metadata.

As suggested in this paper, a conceptual metadata framework underpinned by a social constructivist approach substantially contributes to semantic interoperability in digital libraries.

This study aims to investigate the impact of I4.0 technologies and their interoperability on supply chains (SCs) performance and how the integration of such technologies and their interoperability can create pathways for SCs resilience post-COVID-19. This is of paramount importance in the context of COVID-19 as the investigation around I4.0 technologies may provide relevant insights on how SCs may better respond to unexpected situations like the current pandemic with the use of digital technologies.

A survey research method was designed based on some constructs extracted from the literature regarding the main disruptive technologies, interoperability, elements of supply chains processes (SCPs) performance such as integration, collaboration, transparency, efficiency, responsiveness and profitability. The data were collected from March to July 2020 from different regions of the world when the peak of the first wave of the pandemic had occurred. The survey resulted in 115 valid responses. The study used a combination of descriptive, correlation and multiple regression methods to analyse the data.

The study indicates that disruptive technologies significantly impact SCPs performance (integration, collaboration, responsiveness and transparency) and their resilience. The findings did not support the notion that these technologies improve the efficiency of SCs, a significant contrast to the existing literature. Our findings also refute the existing understanding that interoperability moderates the impact of disruptive technologies on SCPs performance and enhancing the resilience of SCs. However, the findings show that the integration of I4.0 technologies and their interoperability has a positive impact on SCPs profitability.

The findings strongly advocate that this integration plays an important role in improving SC performance, and a future pathway of SC resiliency post-COVID-19. Considering that the I4.0 trend will impact SCs in the coming years, this study brings a relevant contribution to researchers and practitioners.

This study makes a unique contribution by investigating a novel causal relationship between the main elements (I4.0 technologies, interoperability, processes performance and strategic outcomes) related to the SC in this new context.

The deployment of next generation communications (NGC) progresses unevenly, frequently suffering from insufficient interoperability. Interoperability remains a fundamental driver for NGC diffusion, but existing theories remain vague on how to ensure its provision. Since interoperability features increasing returns and public good regimes, its market provision may be hampered. At the same time, public efforts might be ineffective when colliding with private operators' incentives. Sometimes, the policy instruments used might even distort technological diffusion and competition in a way incompatible with a market‐neutral approach. This paper aims to investigate these issues.

This paper first reviews the literature on the economics of standardisation, the provision of private and public goods and the regulation of NGC. Then, it illustrates the EU policy on interactive television. Finally, it presents a research case study, analysing the recent implementation of this policy in Italy.

Coherently with the hypothesis of the literature, the case study confirms that the public‐private interplay for interoperability is complex, and that the public and subsidised provision of an open standard might be captured by private interests.

The case study is representative of the dilemmas affecting future policy‐making in NGC. More case studies will corroborate the above findings, better clarifying the available options to ensure a virtuous public private interplay.

Policy should be carefully framed in a way to impose market‐neutral implementations. Further, open standards – although valuable – are not a panacea and can be useless when systemically tied to other proprietary intellectual property rights (IPRs).

This is a first case study in a new field of policy assessment. The evidence provided is valuable for scholars, practitioners and policy‐makers dealing with NGC.

This paper seeks to develop a specified typology of various levels of semantic interoperability, designed to provide semantically expressive and functional means to interconnect typologically different sub‐systems in an international comprehensive knowledge organization system, supporting advanced information retrieval and exploration strategies.

Taking the analysis of rudimentary forms of a functional interoperability based on simple pattern matching as a starting‐point, more refined strategies to provide semantic interoperability, which is actually reaching the conceptual and even thematic level, are being developed. The paper also examines the potential benefits and perspectives of the selective transfer of modelling strategies from the field of semantic technologies for the refinement of relational structures of inter‐system and inter‐concept relations as a requirement for expressive and functional indexing languages supporting advanced types of semantic interoperability.

As the principles and strategies of advanced information retrieval systems largely depend on semantic information, new concepts and strategies to achieve semantic interoperability have to be developed.

The approach has been developed in the functional and structural context of an international comprehensive system integrating several heterogeneous knowledge organization systems and indexing languages by interconnecting them to a central conceptual structure operating as a spine in an overall system designed to support retrieval and exploration of bibliographic records representing complex conceptual entities.

Research and development aimed at providing technical and structural interoperability has to be complemented by a thorough and precise reflection and definition of various degrees and types of interoperability on the semantic level as well. The approach specifies these levels and reflects the implications and their potential for advanced strategies of retrieval and exploration.

Delay in the clinical information system (CIS) restoration overseeing critical health-care operations after an unexpected data loss can be fatal for patients under care. Investment in information technology (IT) capabilities and synergy between various computerized systems has been argued as the resilient information system's enablers. The purpose of this study is to empirically quantify the influence of IT investment, integration and interoperability in recovering the CIS from a data disaster.

An archival dataset sourced from a European Commission-sponsored survey of 773 hospitals across 30 countries in Europe is utilized to study the relationships. The study adopts a quasi-experimental research design approach where sample observations are weighted based on their propensity to be selected in treatment groups. The artificial weighing allows attaining a pseudo-random sample to counter the effects of selection bias.

The study finds that hospitals with more than 5% of the budget dedicated to IT have 100% higher odds of recovering immediately from a critical data loss in comparison to those that have less than 1% investment in IT. The greater extent of IT integration significantly reduces the time to recover the CIS, while interoperability problems at the organizational level lessen the odds of immediate recovery by 19%. Interoperability problems at the technical and semantic levels do not significantly impact recovery times of the CIS.

The study proposes several empirically quantified and scientifically tested recommendations for health-care providers for faster restoration of critical CIS operations post data loss. The differential impact of the interoperability problems at the technical, semantic and organizational levels has also been highlighted.

This paper aims to present how iterative round‐trip modelling between two different business process modelling tools can be enabled on a conceptual level. Iterative round‐trip modelling addresses model transformations between high‐level business and executable process models, and how to maintain these transformations in change time. Currently, the development of these process models is supported by different tools. To the authors' best knowledge, no coherent collaborative tool environment exists that supports iterative round‐trip modelling.

This paper is primarily based on a literature review of state‐of‐the‐art business to IT transformations regarding business process modelling. The architecture of integrated information systems (ARIS) and Cordys tools are used as an example case in this research. ARIS is a business process analysis (BPA) tool suited for analyzing and designing business processes, while the execution and monitoring of these processes is allowed by Cordys, a business process management suite (BPMS). The theory is used for transforming between ARIS event‐driven process chains from the business perspective and business process modelling notation in Cordys from the IT perspective.

A conceptual framework is proposed to couple a BPA and BPMS tool for round‐trip business process modelling. The framework utilizes concepts from the model‐driven architecture for structurally addressing interoperability and model transformations. Ensuring iterative development with two tools requires traceability of model transformations.

In many organizations, BPA and BPMS tools are used for business process modelling. These are in practice often two different worlds, while they concern around the same business processes. Maintaining multiple versions of the same process models across two tools is a considerable task, as they often are subject to design changes. Interoperability between a BPA and BPMS tool will minimize redundant activities, and reduce business to IT deployment time.

This research provides a theoretical base for coupling a BPA and BPMS tool regarding iterative round‐trip modelling. It provides an overview of the current state‐of‐the‐art literature of business process modelling transformations, and what is necessary for maintaining interoperability between tools. The findings indicate what is expected in tool support for iterative development in business process modelling from analysis and design to execution.

This report aims to present the state of play of semantic interoperability problems in social security data exchanges.

The subject is presented as an open issue and taking into account the circumstances of the exchanges. Electronic exchanges in European Union social security are used as a case study.

Semantic level of these exchanges seems to be the weakness and the use of controlled vocabularies is proposed as possible solution. The creation and maintenance of metadata sets are finally considered as a compromise solution.

The article proposes a solution for the current semantic problems in electronic exchanges of social security information. The solution could be useful for social security institutions all over the world.

A huge amount of diverse data is generated in the Internet of Things (IoT) because of heterogeneous devices like sensors, actuators, gateways and many more. Due to assorted nature of devices, interoperability remains a major challenge for IoT system developers. The purpose of this study is to use mapping techniques for converting relational database (RDB) to resource directory framework (RDF) for the development of ontology. Ontology helps in achieving semantic interoperability in application areas of IoT which results in shared/common understanding of the heterogeneous data generated by the diverse devices used in health-care domain.

To overcome the issue of semantic interoperability in healthcare domain, the authors developed an ontology for patients having cardio vascular diseases. Patients located at any place around the world can be diagnosed by Heart Experts located at another place by using this approach. This mechanism deals with the mapping of heterogeneous data into the RDF format in an integrated and interoperable manner. This approach is used to integrate the diverse data of heart patients needed for diagnosis with respect to cardio vascular diseases. This approach is also applicable in other fields where IoT is mostly used.

Experimental results showed that the RDF works better than the relational database for semantic interoperability in the IoT. This concept-based approach is better than key-based approach and reduces the computation time and storage of the data.

The proposed approach helps in overcoming the demerits of relational database like standardization, expressivity, provenance and supports SPARQL. Therefore, it helps to overcome the heterogeneity, thereby enabling the semantic interoperability in IoT.

Since the advent of non‐proprietary technologies fostered by the internet, the travel distribution model has been subjected to significant changes. One of the primary changes has been the expanding potential of interoperability between systems brought about the advent of extended markup language‐based specifications developed and published by the Open Travel Alliance (OTA). The potential impact of the underlying technology (web services) in use for developing these standards is significant. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate strategic perspectives from key industry players over the potential of this technology and examine the factors pertaining to their adoption.

Data for this came from a series of 30‐45‐minute interviews with senior executives of four major travel suppliers (included three major hotel chains and one leading car rental company) as well as three major intermediaries (comprised two global distribution system companies and one major online travel agency). Interviews were guided using two types of signposts – conceptual and industry‐level phenomena.

Findings indicate that suppliers and intermediaries see distinctive levers of advantage from OTA messaging specifications. While suppliers seek to build flexibility to add/delete channels and subsequently leverage greater control over inventory distribution, intermediaries seek to consolidate on their aggregation capabilities through wider content and enhance dynamic packaging as value for end‐customers.

This is a qualitative study comprising in‐depth interviews with a selected few respondents that limit the generalizability of the results. Additionally, the perspective is limited to the larger players in the travel distribution space.

The study is the first in hospitality/travel marketing literature to examine the issues of interoperability specific to a major initiative such as the OTA.

The application of category theory to interoperability to increase understanding of the problems and to facilitate the development of practical tools for their solution.

Category theory is naturally suited to handling interoperability. The use of first order predicate logic in many information systems may be justified through its completeness. However, the work of Gödel shows that such systems are undecidable if they rely on formal systems of number and/or sets. For interoperability dyadic higher order logic is required, which is neither complete nor decidable if based on sets. However, pure category theory is still axiomatic so is also neither complete nor decidable. Applied category theory based on cartesian closed categories for process is natural and is both complete and decidable. Gödel's theorems therefore do not apply.

The paper finds that composed adjunctions appear particularly well‐suited for modelling interoperability, with composition of distinct functors for mapping across a number of levels and of endofunctors for business process interoperability. The monad/comonad category provides a powerful abstraction of the business process. The development of a tool based on categorial principles written in Haskell may be a way forward but only as an initial set model approach.

This paper applies categorial constructions which permit a natural formal approach to interoperability.