Conciliating Perspectives from Mapping Agencies and Web of Data on Successful European SDIs: Toward a European Geographic Knowledge Graph

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

It’s difficult to recommend the publication of this paper in its current state because the research contribution is poorly described. I struggled personally to find the scientific contribution and the methodological framework of this paper. The work is turning on an interesting subject, but it was written as a review work or more as some reports, no real research paper. This paper has a structure that must be improved. Some objectives in the abstract are defined, but later in the paper, they not elaborated, verified, and discussed in the methodological framework; the methodology description missing, conclusions must be more specific and improved. Pictures are of low quality, and not adequate commented. The central Figure 4 does not have references and any comments.

Author Response

Answer :

We have restructured the paper in order to focus the introduction on the addressed problems and approach. We added in the intro the definitions for SDI mentioning all their components to explain why our approach has to consider several facets. We also explained the tight dependence between the availability of linked data to work with and the research on Semantic Web for SDI. For this reason developing scientific contributions also requires actions to feed the infrastructure -and our research- with Geographical Linked data.  We hope this context and approach is clear also in the conclusion.

Scientific contributions at this stage are :

our presentation of GI communities and Semantic Web assets as well as specificities. If the paper is published, we aimed at sharing this analysis to enhance mutual awareness of these communities specificites and lower barriers for collaboration The proposal of a European approach, and a complex multifacets roadmap to co-design contributions, considering several inter-related aspects of SDIs. Thanks to your review we have summarized this vision as an open European Geographical Knowledge Graph. Alignment between this European vision and existing results and prototypes currently disconnected one from another and propose to align them and their roadmap with a European perspective. The fact that previous works were developed ahead of the design of this vision explains why in this paper, some prototypes were more difficult to comment than others.

As for central figure 4, we added more references and comments to it in the paper. We also included its origin which is an oral presentation from one co-author of this paper. It was added in the bibliography also.

We wish to thank you for your time and review and hope we have answered your remarques and questions.

Reviewer 2 Report

Achieving successful spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) are needed; they contribute to filling a gap towards collaboration among cartographers, authoritative data providers, and Web data scientists. To date, such studies are few, despite an acknowledged need to collaborate in the big data era. This paper is, therefore, a timely contribution. I feel that the subject matter is certainly worthy of publication.

However, my overall impression is that the paper does not work very well in its current status. It reads more like a report rather than a research article. I would suggest trimming the first two sections and discussing the advances of the proposed solutions in Section 5.

 

1 Sections 1 and 2 sound too descriptive and too long. Instead, it should be more question-driven (or hypothesis-driven). And many of the statements lack evidence and citations in both sections. For example, Line 196, any evidence? I would like to see citations for core priorities and missions of cartographers and Web data developers.

2 In section 3, I like figure 4. I would like to see the consistent contents of this section and the proposed solution in figure 4.  An operational or empirical case of using this solution would be helpful for reading.

3 In section 5, A discussion about how the method would work well for more broad cases would be insightful.

 

Specific

Line 32, I wonder about the definition of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs).

Figure 3 is difficult to read.

Line 352, “Wikimedia” or Wikipedia?

Line 370, I am not sure “[14] claim… ” is the right writing.

Line 373 and 374, see above.

Line 436, what does LOD represent?

Author Response

Reviewer2:

Achieving successful spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) are needed; they contribute to filling a gap towards collaboration among cartographers, authoritative data providers, and Web data scientists. To date, such studies are few, despite an acknowledged need to collaborate in the big data era. This paper is, therefore, a timely contribution. I feel that the subject matter is certainly worthy of publication.

However, my overall impression is that the paper does not work very well in its current status. It reads more like a report rather than a research article. I would suggest trimming the first two sections and discussing the advances of the proposed solutions in Section 5.

1 Sections 1 and 2 sound too descriptive and too long. Instead, it should be more question-driven (or hypothesis-driven). And many of the statements lack evidence and citations in both sections. For example, Line 196, any evidence? I would like to see citations for core priorities and missions of cartographers and Web data developers.

2 In section 3, I like figure 4. I would like to see the consistent contents of this section and the proposed solution in figure 4.  An operational or empirical case of using this solution would be helpful for reading.

3 In section 5, A discussion about how the method would work well for more broad cases would be insightful.

 

We have restructured the paper in order to focus the introduction (section 1) on the addressed problems and approach. We added in the intro the definitions for SDI mentioning all their components to explain why our approach has to consider several facets. We also explained the tight dependence between the availability of linked data to work with and the research on Semantic Web for SDI. For this reason developing scientific contributions also requires actions to feed the infrastructure -and our research- with Geographical Linked data.  We hope this context and approach is clear also in the conclusion.

Section 2 has been kept but more focused on why is collaboration needed and difficult. We see it as an important contribution of such a paper for the corresponding communities to know better each one another, if it was published, and kept it but with a better structure and removing some part of it. We also added evidence from the litterature and in some cases links to published reports or slides when the evidence did not come from litterature.

Figure 4 has been more described and we hope it meets your request. It is so far on-going work and only components have been developed by the integration is still pending.  Yet, it describes an on-going prototype that has been designed before our proposal of a joint european approach. It is not an implementation of our proposal but an on-going prototype that has been started before our joint work. And it was designed in a way disconnected from the ontology of geographic space context. 

Our proposal is actually to propose a unifying common roadmap to integrate on-going work on LD for SDI (like Georef) as well as past results on ontologies into a mutual European effort. We tried to explain how to align these prototypes with this vision of a European Geographical Knowledge Graph. 

We have introduced more examples (in the section 3 and 4) as well as perspectives for validation (in section 5) to meet your comment on section 5.

Thank you very much for your time spent and interest.We hope we have met your review -but for the LOD bug at the time of writing this answer (see below)-.

Specific

Line 32, I wonder about the definition of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs).

We proposed a definition

Figure 3 is difficult to read.

We removed the “URI RECOMMENDATION&LINKING PRINCIPLES” and added more comments in the text; yet the contributor does not have a better resolution to date. If the difficulty is linked to the resolution we may need to re-draw the figure from scratch

 

Line 352, “Wikimedia” or Wikipedia?

You are right, we are not targeting wikimedia communities. We have changed the text.

Line 370, I am not sure “[14] claim… ” is the right writing.

It has ben changed.

Line 373 and 374, see above.

We hope we have met your comment -but are unsure-.

 

Line 436, what does LOD represent?

Linked Open Data. At the time of writing this answer I realise the explanation of this notion, which was in the introduction of a first revision, has been erased to get the introduction more focused. I am sorry and get back to the editor to see if it is possible to fix it.

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

 

I have read your report with great interest. The manuscript is well written and informative, probably it is in interest of most of the geoscientists using spatial data. The manuscript fits well to the scope of the Journal. Overall I think after minor revision the manuscript can be published. My only concern is that it is not really clear to me how the information collection was performed and how the collected information were analysed. The manuscript reads rather narrative. This might be addressed as a potential target to fix during revision. My minor comments are on the annotated PDF file provided.

 

Kind regards,

 

Prof Karoly Nemeth

Massey University, New Zealand 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We have detailed the context in which information collection and analysis is performed, mainly seminar organised by two important European networks regarding engaging national mapping agencies in innovative SDIs : EuroSDR and Eurogeographics.We added references to peer reviewed report from EuroSDR but also to Eurogeographics website where presentations and minutes are published (submissions are peer reviewed but there is no official publication afterwards).

We also tried to adopt a more structured guideline for the paper, fostering our contribution around a Europen Geographical Knowledge Graph and modifying the style of the conclusion.

 

Thank you very much for the time spent reviewing this paper and encouragement.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Paper is improved, but still, sound like the report. Methodology improved. On many places in a text, authors are repeatedly explaining and referencing on the structure of the paper instead of analyzing and describe research in deep, it needs to be rewritten  

(for example in conclusion

In the introduction of this paper, we presented the stakes of successful European SDIs and remaining challenges and highlighted the difficulty of adapt to this domain SW technology beyond local or national prototyping. We presented in section 2

 ).

Figures are still low quality

Page 3 sentence: 

new sensors (like Lidars, Unmanned Airborn Vectors, in situ sensors),

what mean Unmanned Airborn Vectors?

Author Response

We have modified the paper to focus on what is the contribution and remove the "report-like" style (throughout the paper) but also some considerations that were indeed more belonging to a report of activities than to a scientific paper.

We detailed more the approach and results.

We modified UAV and improved the figures quality.  

Last, we had a re-reading by an English native speaker. 

Thank you for the thorough rereview.

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors addressed my concerns well. I have no further comments.

Author Response

We have modified the paper to address the marks "Can be improved" in your review to our best.

Thank you for the review.