Review Comment:
I found the paper interesting and the subject definitely in scope of the special issue and my evaluation is overall positive. Nonetheless, there are some things that in my opinion need clarification (some of which are very important from my perspective), so I would recommend some re-working to provide it with a stronger foundation. The ontology is relevant as it addressed a central topic for the cultural heritage domain and it reuses and extends ontologies that are standard. Some concepts should be analysed more carefully though. The paper is well structured, except for the fact that some relevant information about the project are communicated only towards the end, while they could provide more context to the reader if given since the beginning. The paper is overall well written, with some minor typos to be checked. I hope my suggestions could be useful. I group them in general and specific comments below.
GENERAL COMMENTS
- I believe in the introduction some information about the motivations of the READ-IT project are missing, they only appear towards the end of the paper, but they could help the reader in contextualizing better the research were they given since the beginning. Also, I would add a paragraph or two explaining the foreseen applications of the READ-IT ecosystem, possibly with an example.
- Some of the most important concepts introduced are too ambiguous and they shouldn’t, as interoperability is the final aim. More on this in the specific comments below.
- Sometime in the paper a reference to theories about reading, experience and action is made, but no specific theory is ever mentioned, so it is difficult to see how the concepts have been developed, if based on the intuition of the modeler, on previous projects or also on theories. I believe that if theories have been used, these should be explicitly referenced, as they would provide a more solid foundation to the conceptual analysis.
SPECIFIC COMMENTS
Introduction
- p.2 the final paragraph of the section would be more readable if written in a more discursive way, rather than like a list of items with many redundancies between titles and descriptions.
Ontology Development Approach
- p.3 please describe better what the sources are already at this point (2.1).
Ontology Requirements
- p. 5 again, it is not crystal clear whether the listed types of sources are those already used by the project or sources that is possible to integrate in the future.
- p. 6 the authors say: “To be used as training sets, the research data must be integrated by making explicit derivable facts and incorporating validation of annotations by experts to differentiate them from automatic annotations.” This is very interesting and useful, but how is it done?
- p. 6 some details should be provided on how the analysis of the sources is performed. Which are the “units of meaning” under focus? Are they excerpts of descriptions of the experience of reading? If this is the case, better to put it explicitly.
- p. 6 I would add an example of cause/effect relations between a moment/episode/reading towards a reader’s condition. Can these three elements act at the same time? Is the effect intended to take place just while reading or also afterwards (or that would rather be called an “outcome”)?
- p. 6 concerning reader’s conditions, does the human/social situation include, besides the contingent situation (being on a train), also a more general one, connected to the “status” of the reader (age, gender, economic situation at the time of reading)? Concerning mental states, should also changes triggered by reading (and while reading) be considered, or also the mental state a reader is in before starting to read and after having read? If these are described in a source, why not?
- p. 6 the concept of “approach to reading” looks too wide, as it includes habits (towards reading in general, reading a type of content, on a specific medium, in a situation), opinions about topics, authors, contents, it appears to me that it is too vague as it is described here.
I understand this section just introduces the requirements, but I believe that a bit more systematic description, suggesting the categories that will be introduced later, would be more understandable for the reader.
Reused Ontologies
- p. 7 the assessment criteria should be described. For instance, what makes a reused ontology better in management of annotations and sources? In which sense an ontology describes better of another the content of sources? My impression is that the reused ontologies have been chosen based on the fact that they are standard, if this is not the case, some characteristics that make them better than others should be mentioned.
- p. 8 “The class socE Intention to Apply, specialization of scoE Mental Attitude, is related to the concepts of E39 Actor and socE Activity Plan as the intention of an actor toward of implementing a plan. In this frame, socE Intention to Apply could be used to encode the intention of reading, as a specialisation of State of Mind preceding and premise of a reading process.” I find this paragraph a bit hard to read, as it presupposes too much knowledge of socE. I would rephrase it at a more conceptual level.
- p. 8 why has FOAF been chosen? Which advantages does it bring?
Reading Experience Ontology
- p. 9 “The reading experiences we are representing with the experience ontology are annotations made on a variety of sources. The reason why we rely on annotation rather than on categorization is to enable researchers to address a wide range of problems in reading studies.” I really don’t understand these two sentences. How can reading experiences be annotations? In which sense? Why relying on annotation allows to address a wider range of problems than relying on categorization? And in which sense? Shouldn’t annotations be based on categorization? Otherwise, how can they bear some semantics?
- p. 9 in “approach to reading” it is said that the gaps have addressed through the analysis of existing theories. Which theories? And how do they help? Are some of the concepts used taken from these theories? Why have they been chosen? I believe this is an important point.
- p. 9 what is the reading in the reader’s mind? Is this a state of mind? Is sense-making a state of mind? How is this related to other states of mind, for instance emotions? Is this aspect treated in the ontology?
- p. 10 the concept of Reading Agent is an important one, if I’m correct, this has to be seen ontologically as a role (it is a description of conditions of a person). First, why necessarily a person? What about artificial agents? It seems to me that the ontology doesn’t need to commit to this, as long as there’s a change in the informational state of the artificial agent. Second, are conditions (ontologically) properties of the agent? Third, in the case of a public reading, how should we consider the listeners? There’s a sense in which we can model them as “Reading Agents”, since their states of mind can be changed by the reading, even if they are not practically those who read.
- p. 10 I’m not sure the distinction between material and immaterial captures the difference between Medium and Content, maybe referring to some ontology of informational objects could help. Also, can we say that all media are material? What about electronic media? I’m aware these can be considered material in a sense, but maybe this point deserves a footnote.
- p. 10 I find problematic defining an alteration as part of a resource, they seem to be ontologically distinct entities. Also, in which sense has a note to be considered an alteration of the content? If the reader adds a note on the margin of a book, they alter their reading experience, but do they really alter the content of the book?
- p. 10 at first I was confused by the claim that experiences are part of sessions, which are part of readings. Maybe the problem is just in the terms used, as experience seems to carry some implications (mental, emotional), that the other two carry less. Is this the case? Is it possible to have a reading experience of a whole session or of a whole reading.
- p. 11 I believe that the relation between Temporal Entity and Activity should be made more explicit for the reader who’s not too familiar with CIDOC, but more importantly, the relation between Reading_Process and reading should be made explicit, as the terminology doesn’t help.
- p. 11 the difference between engagement and transportation is not very clear. It seems that transportation is an engagement towards the immaterial component (the content). But this would imply that engagement can be also towards the material (the medium). Is this the case? If yes, I found it a bit counterintuitive. In other parts of the paper, transportation seems to involve emotions, while engagement not necessarily. For instance, I can engage in the interpretation of a difficult argument without been transported. Am I correct?
- p. 11 it is said that the experience is a change of the reader’s mental state. But I assume this is not the case for session and reading, so maybe this can be used as a specific property of experience distinguishing it from other parts of session or reading.
- p. 11 State_of_Mind represents a revision of the mental state of the reader. But how are called mental states that are not changes, for instance the fact that the reader was sad when they started the session?
- p. 11 it is not clear what the “Undefined” orientation is used for. Maybe an example could help.
- p. 11 if one can have State_of_Mind that precedes a Reading_Process, why are they represented as changes?
- p. 11 why is Reading_Frame defined as the union of Reading and Session? Wasn’t Session just a continuous and active part of Reading?
- p. 11 “In the first case, accordingly with the definition of Reading, Session and Experience, a State_of_Mind is evidence of experiences occurring during the Reading_Process.” This sentence makes me suspect that the word “experience” refers to two different concepts. If this is the case, it should be clarified.
- p. 12 it seems strange to define the aim of reading as an expectation. Should the reader always anticipate some effects of reading?
- p. 12 is remembrance necessarily about other readings or resources? Couldn’t it be about something external (like an event in the past), just triggered by the reading?
- p. 12 which is the ontological relation between events and situations?
- p. 12 is Reading Resource necessarily a material entity? So here the reference is more to the medium than to the content, is it intentional?
- p. 13 why it is said that there is no material interaction involving reader and reading? How can this happen without the medium (which can be material)?
- p. 13 which is the criterion to decide whether two events are comparable or not? BetterThan and WorseThan seem too vague, how can you model that a reading is better than another under one aspect, but worse under another?
Validation
- p. 14 it seems strange to me that the questions that guided the modeling are answered by the modelers themselves and used as validation. Maybe this methodological point can be clarified.
- p. 15 are posts, web novels, comics, comments, posters, example of content? Some of these (posts, posters) look more like media, others (comics, web novels) more like types of resources.
- p. 15 if suggestions and reviews are considered contents about other contents, rather than part of the content they are suggestions and reviews of, why are notes treated differently?
- p. 18 Fig. 15 p1 is two different readers, r1 and r2. This would support the idea that reader is a role. So, do the same person is a different reader with respect to different resources? Or to different readings (possibly of the same resource, or the same content carried by different media)? This is interesting, but should be clarified and put explicitly.
To conclude my review, I believe the paper is interesting and that it deals with an extremely complex topic, which brings many open issues. For this reason, I recommend acceptance with major revision, as I believe that the paper could benefit a lot from a more thorough conceptual analysis.
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