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The paper aims to investigate what is the best ontological framework of anticipatory systems. Its aim is to argue the thesis that the ontology on which anticipatory systems are based should be a dynamic one: a kind of process ontology. It seeks to include a demonstration of the fruitfulness of such an ontological framework for the investigation of anticipatory systems.

The methodology of the paper is a process ontological one. The objectives are achieved by a comparative analysis of the static and dynamic approaches to the ontological framework.

A process ontological framework is a reliable basis for the substantiation of the thesis that there is no great gap between living and non‐living systems as far as anticipation is concerned.

An example is represented of an anticipatory non‐living system that is artificially created and is programmed as a self‐control system. In this respect the paper has some practical implications.

A new approach is suggested to the investigation of anticipatory systems. It could be of interest not only for philosophers, but also for scientists who work on ontology as technology.

This paper presents a framework for ontology evolution tailored to Digital Libraries, which makes use of two different sources for change detection and propagation, the usage of ontologies by users and the changes of available data.

After presenting the logical architecture of the evolution framework, we first illustrate how to deal with usage‐driven changes, that is changes derived from the actual usage of ontologies. Second, we describe the generation of data‐driven ontology changes based on the constant flow of documents coming into digital libraries.

The proposed framework for ontology ontology evolution, which is currently applied and evaluated in the case studies, significantly reduces the costs of ontology updates and improves the quality of the ontology with respect to the users' requirements.

The management of dynamic knowledge is crucial for many knowledge management applications. Our approach for usage‐driven and data‐driven change discovery not only assures the consistency of ontologies modeling dynamic knowledge, but also reduces the burden of manual ontology engineering.

This paper presents the first approach towards a common framework for ontology evolution based on usage‐driven and data‐driven change discovery.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a novel framework for visual-aided ontology-based multidimensional ranking and to demonstrate a case study in the academic domain.

The paper presents a method for adapting semantic web technologies on multiple criteria decision-making algorithms to endow to them dynamic characteristics. It also showcases the enhancement of the decision-making process by visual analytics.

The semantic enhanced ranking method enables the reproducibility and transparency of ranking results, while the visual representation of this information further benefits decision makers into making well-informed and insightful deductions about the problem.

This approach is suitable for application domains that are ranked on the basis of multiple criteria.

The discussed approach provides a dynamic ranking methodology, instead of focusing only on one application field, or one multiple criteria decision-making method. It proposes a framework that allows integration of multidimensional, domain-specific information and produces complex ranking results in both textual and visual form.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new method of ontology‐based digital product data exchange. The digital product data are enriched with virtual prototype (VP) model information and the designed exchange process is discussed. Additionally, an algorithm enabling the ontology‐based data exchange method among missile guide systems is proposed and analyzed.

Semantic sevice‐oriented architecture (SSOA) is an innovative integration architecture for digital product information integration and process integration. In digital product ontology layer of SSOA, a new method of ontology‐based product data exchange is proposed. Compared with traditional information exchange, the method adds the VP's information to general digital products' information. The VP's information is described by building VP static structure ontology and dynamic behavior ontology. The exchange process of the novel method is discussed in detail. Finally, an example illustrating the data exchange among missile guide systems is given and the merits of the proposed method is analyzed.

Simulation information, especially VP information, is not always well defined and taken into account by product data exchange systems such as product data management or product lifecycle management. A formal description of VP information is often required in efficient and effective product data exchange. The goal is to define VP structure and behavior ontologies to enable ontology‐based digital product data exchange.

Using VP information including structure information and behavior information, the paper provides a new method of digital product data exchange.

This study attempts to formulate an ontological proposition for the intellectual capital (IC) domain. This study is motivated by the debate of contemporary thinking for different IC research streams (IC1‐ostensive versus IC2‐performative) and their different ontological perceptions for IC. The proposed ontological proposition aims to serve the epistemological requirements towards the development of a common accepted generic IC theory.

The formulation of the ontology for the IC domain is based on contemporary tools within the fields of ontology and conceptual modelling. The principal dimensions of the ontology for the IC domain are identified following the directions of the Sowa's generalised theory for ontological frameworks. For each dimension, a generic entity is defined by drawing inferences from disciplines relevant to the contemporary IC inquiry. The relationships between the generic entities are modelled with the semantic representations of General Systems Theory (GST).

This paper provides an answer to the epistemological problem of how to perceive the substance of the IC domain. The derived ontology for the IC domain recognises different IC ontological dimensions that correspond to the IC ontological assumptions of different IC research streams, attempts to associate the IC of an organization with the tangible dimension of the enterprise, and provides conceptual semantics for modelling firm‐specific IC domains under the prism of different epistemological perspectives for IC.

The proposed ontological proposition for the IC domain is an abstract ontology. It might empower researchers with guidelines for systemising the formulation of theoretical propositions and descriptions for their research fields. Yet, as an abstract ontology, it might create difficulty in its practical implementation.

The ontological proposition for the IC domain can contribute towards the debate on the establishment of a common research communicational rationalism within the IC research community for coordinating individual research efforts.

This chapter points out and tries to describe the (missing) link between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social ontology/ontology of the firm. The author believes that this gap in the literature hinders the progress of CSR theoretical/empirical understanding and effectiveness; therefore, the following question is addressed: is a social theory-focused approach to the ontology of the firm relevant to CSR studies? While currently many disciplines are seeking to clarify CSR theory and practice, the role of social ontology has relatively been under-explored despite its foundational importance.

This chapter provides rationales for identifying a set of interrelated themes to be included in future research projects. A literature review is carried out, and further analysis and desk research can be drawn from the key notions identified.

This viewpoint conceptual chapter suggests that social ontology can be an important subject of inquiry in order to bridge the existing gaps in CSR/Business Ethics studies. A possible conceptual agreement for a realist and social theory-focused approach to CSR is illustrated.

While encouraging more effort and commitment in this emerging and fascinating field, this chapter concentrates on some selected key aspects such as the meaning of corporate moral agency and the ontological status of social collectives (e.g. firms).

This chapter lays the ground for future pilot exploratory research, and could be instructive for the construction of specific research methodologies/theoretical tools seeking to explore not so much the ways CSR is defined (indeed, there seems to be a broad consensus about it) but rather how CSR is socially constructed, implemented and carried out.

This chapter can potentially help grow knowledge about the nexus between CSR, social ontology and the underlying metaphysical issues, thus facilitating a comprehensive inter-/multi-/pluri-disciplinary understanding and giving a contribution to the relevant ongoing scientific and practical debates.

This chapter, while uncovering and exploring the aforementioned novel connections, can enrich the study of CSR with respect to the current mainstream approaches, for example, stakeholder management and engagement, social accounting and reporting, socially responsible investment (SRI).

The purposes of this paper are: (1) to identify what types of business process operation controllers are discussed in literature and how can they be classified in order to establish the available body of knowledge in the literature, and then, (2) to identify which concepts are relevant for business process operation control and how are these concepts related in order to offer a reference model for assessing how well are control layers enforced in the dynamic stable nature of an enterprise' business processes operation.

One cycle of the circular framework for literature review as proposed by Vom Brocke et al. (2009) is followed. Five stages are comprised: (1) definition of review scope (Section 1 and 2), (2) conceptualization of topic (Section 3), (3) literature search (Section 4), (4) literature analysis and synthesis (Section 5), and (5) definition of a research agenda (Section 6 that also concludes the paper). Vom Brocke, J., Simons, A., Niehaves, B., Niehaves, B., Reimer, K., Plattfaut, R., and Cleven, A. (2009), “Reconstructing the giant: on the importance of rigour in documenting the literature search process”, ECIS 2009 Proceedings, Vol. 161.

Results indicate that (1) many studies exist in the literature, but no integrated knowledge is proposed, hindering the advance of knowledge in this field, (2) a knowledge gap exists between the implemented solutions and the conceptualization needed to generalize the solution to other contexts. Also, the ontology proposed provides a reference model for assessing the maturity of the business process control operation.

The contents contained in the paper needs to be further deepened to include the concepts of “business process management” and “business process mining”, as well as a semantic equivalence study between concepts can integrate better this conceptual framework and identify similarities. Then, the relationship between industries and dynamically stable business processes operation concepts have not yet been fully investigated. Thirdly, the atypical curve of interest that business processes operational control has been receiving in literature is not fully understood.

Some example applications that could benefit from this ontology are (1) security policy for business processes fine grained access control; (2) business processes enforced with decentralized policies, e.g. blockchain; (3) business process compliance and change; or (4) intelligent enterprise decision-making process, e.g. using AI trained neural network to support the human decision to choose if a control actuation is positive or negative instead of relying only on human-based decisions.

We understand that business process operation is a dynamically stable system, where steady motion is achieved with the continuous imposition of actor's actions. Therefore, all the work that contribute to the development of knowledge regarding the actor's actions in their execution environment offer the ability to optimize, and/or reengineering, business processes delivering more social value or better social conditions.

In the best of our knowledge this work is unique in the sense that integrates a set of concepts that is rarely, or never, combined. Table 3 corroborates this result.

Research in the area of technology‐enhanced learning (TEL) throughout the last decade has largely focused on sharing and reusing educational resources and data. This effort has led to a fragmented landscape of competing metadata schemas, or interface mechanisms. More recently, semantic technologies were taken into account to improve interoperability. The linked data approach has emerged as the de facto standard for sharing data on the web. To this end, it is obvious that the application of linked data principles offers a large potential to solve interoperability issues in the field of TEL. This paper aims to address this issue.

In this paper, approaches are surveyed that are aimed towards a vision of linked education, i.e. education which exploits educational web data. It particularly considers the exploitation of the wealth of already existing TEL data on the web by allowing its exposure as linked data and by taking into account automated enrichment and interlinking techniques to provide rich and well‐interlinked data for the educational domain.

So far web‐scale integration of educational resources is not facilitated, mainly due to the lack of take‐up of shared principles, datasets and schemas. However, linked data principles increasingly are recognized by the TEL community. The paper provides a structured assessment and classification of existing challenges and approaches, serving as potential guideline for researchers and practitioners in the field.

Being one of the first comprehensive surveys on the topic of linked data for education, the paper has the potential to become a widely recognized reference publication in the area.

The increasingly competitive hotel industry and emerging customer trends where guests are more discerning and want a personalized experience has led to the need of innovative applications. Personalization is much more important for hotels, especially now in the post-COVID lockdown era, as it challenges their business model. However, personalization is difficult to design and realize due to the variety of factors and requirements to be considered. Differences are both in the offer (hotels and their rooms) and demand (customers’ profiles and needs) in the accommodation domain. As for the implementation, critical issues are in hardware-dependent and vendor-specific Internet of Things devices which are difficult to program. Additionally, there is complexity in realizing applications that consider varying customer needs and context via existing personalization options. This paper aims to propose an ontological framework to enhance the capabilities of hotels in offering their accommodation and personalization options based on a guest’s characteristics, activities and needs.

A research approach combining both quantitative and qualitative methods was used to develop a hotel room personalization framework. The core of the framework is a hotel room ontology (HoROnt) that supports well-defined machine-readable descriptions of hotel rooms and guest profiles. Hotel guest profiles are modeled via logical rules into an inference engine exploiting reasoning functionalities used to recommend hotel room services and features.

Both the ontology and the inference engine module have been validated with promising results which demonstrate high accuracy. The framework leverages user characteristics, and dynamic contextual data to satisfy guests’ needs for personalized service provision. The semantic rules provide recommendations to both new and returning guests, thereby also addressing the cold start issue.

This paper extends HoROnt in two ways, to be able to add: instances of the concepts (room characteristics and services; guest profiles), i.e. to create a knowledge base, and logical rules into an inference engine, to model guests’ profiles and to be used to offer personalized hotel rooms. Thanks to the standards adopted to implement personalization, this framework can be integrated into existing reservation systems. It can also be adapted for any type of accommodation since it is broad-based and personalizes varying features and amenities in the rooms.