Review Comment:
The paper describes a tool, called Semantically Mapping Science (SMS) platform, which allows data enrichment, integration, exploration and analysis.
It is indeed an interesting topic, in line with the journal and the special issue.
In particular, it is very useful for making the use of semantic data easier and foster the integration among datasets. Thus, I think the tool is valuable and useful for researchers in different communities.
The paper is well-written and easy to follow, and report the state of the art of the technologies in the field (even if the authors tend to over-cite themselves).
However, I have some concerns about the paper. It seems the collection of different works and of about ten previous papers of the authors. Indeed, I understand the need to put all together to provide a systematic description of the system, but the differences among these publications should make explicit, indicating what section of the paper is novel and unpublished. In general, which are the novel parts of this paper? This should be make clear both in relation to state of the art as well as previsous papers of the authors.
Moreover, in general I don't see why this platform is specific for social science research: please, make clear why this field can benefit more of this platform with respect to other domains.
I don't see any consideration about privacy of data: how it is managed by the system?
What about web data (like pages, or posts) that are not semantic? I don't understand if they can be considered as a source of the platform.
It is not clear which analysis can be perform by the platform and how.
In general, has the platform been evaluated? Is it simple to use? does it perform well? Please, report at least the partial tests or user evaluations the authors performed for the single modules, if any.
Precise comments:
- Section 3.2 explain better the meaning of metadata requested
- Section 4: a description of the IUI is missing. Has it been evaluated by usability and efficacy point of view by the users?
- Section 8: use case: use case 1 has just been published elsewhere (ref 4): I suggest to avoid it and described in more details the other ones, in particular use case 2
Minor remarks:
- check all the links, for example, link 25 does not work
- figure 5 and 6 should be exchanged
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