Conceptualization and Non-Relational Implementation of Ontological and Epistemic Vagueness of Information in Digital Humanities^†

Round  1

Reviewer 1 Report

Overall I think this paper has potential and would encourage you to continue working on it. I have indicated "minor revision" but it is perhaps somewhere in the middle between "major" and "minor".  I feel it needs quite a lot of reestructuring - I will try to explain below. My comments are written pretty much in the order that they came to mind as I was reading through the paper.

1) In the introduction when mentioning the first references (2 and 3) refers to several authors but they link to the EU projects Europeana and ARIADNE. Or ref 6 to the ConML technical specifications. I all these cases, and how they should support the facts mentioned, there should be specific articles and authors mentioned I guess.

2) In page 2 line 11 the authors say that developing conceptual models that are capable of managing vagueness is difficult, but such claim should be followed by a short enumeration of such difficulties..

3) Line 39 in page 3 is missing one word I guess: [...] for numerous *projects* outside humanities perspective [...]

4) In relation to the structure of the paper, sections and subsections, this is where I think an important restructuring would help the non-expert reader to understand more clearly some of the key points related to vagueness, and other parts of the article in a different order:

- In my understanding, subsections 2.1 and 2.2 should be shorter, pointing to the key clarifications, and part of the Introduction section.

- On the contrary, the paragraphs referring to the specific case study context (3.1) and the paragraph referring to Firebase in page 15 (lines 6-27) should move to the Materials and Methods section, anticipating the results as defined in Implementation (3.2) and forward.

5) The Discussion section finishes with a relative short paragraph on how the conceptual framework and potential implementation would contribute to support vagueness in DH, but one would expect more details about it referring back to the key aspects defined in the Introduction, and how specifically more applications based on non-relational structures could benefit from it.
               

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for the very useful and encouraging comments. We tried to take into account the maximum of comments to improve the paper. We hope the answers and changes were made accordingly. 

1) In the introduction when mentioning the first references (2 and 3) refers to several authors but they link to the EU projects Europeana and ARIADNE. Or ref 6 to the ConML technical specifications. I all these cases, and how they should support the facts mentioned, there should be specific articles and authors mentioned I guess.

Yes, thank you for pointing it out. We have added two references (Gonzalez-Perez and Eide) of authors supporting the claims.

2) In page 2 line 11 the authors say that developing conceptual models that are capable of managing vagueness is difficult, but such claim should be followed by a short enumeration of such difficulties..

We have added a line with the explanation of the assertion. (lines 12 and 13)

3) Line 39 in page 3 is missing one word I guess: [...] for numerous *projects* outside humanities perspective [...]

Yes, thank you for pointing it out. We have added as "interest for numerous fields and projects outside humanities disciplines,..."

4) In relation to the structure of the paper, sections and subsections, this is where I think an important restructuring would help the non-expert reader to understand more clearly some of the key points related to vagueness, and other parts of the article in a different order: 

- In my understanding, subsections 2.1 and 2.2 should be shorter, pointing to the key clarifications, and part of the Introduction section.

- On the contrary, the paragraphs referring to the specific case study context (3.1) and the paragraph referring to Firebase in page 15 (lines 6-27) should move to the Materials and Methods section, anticipating the results as defined in Implementation (3.2) and forward.

Thank you for pointing it out. We tried to find a balance here due to other reviewers encounts the organization of the paper fine, so we redefined the structure of the paper following the overall suggestions. In particular, we followed your suggestion regarding the first change (to the introduction) of subsections 2.1 and 2.2.

Regarding the case study, we think that the case study itself it's a result in the paper, due to there is no case studies in the literature to address with this issue in DH, so we maintain the case study inside the Results part of the paper.

5) The Discussion section finishes with a relative short paragraph on how the conceptual framework and potential implementation would contribute to support vagueness in DH, but one would expect more details about it referring back to the key aspects defined in the Introduction, and how specifically more applications based on non-relational structures could benefit from it.

We have added an explanatory paragrpah regarding the referring back to the motivation of the work and future application in the Discussion (lines 9 to 12)

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper presents a framework for the expression of ontological and epistemic vagueness in Digital Humanities. To this end a specific modelling mechanisms in ConML is used allowing researchers to express imprecision and uncertainty. The paper presents and discusses several approaches modelling vagueness.  An application to a real project is presented.

The paper is well written and easy to follow. The features of ConML are precisely described. The state of the art is useful. The framework is adequately presented. The issue of vagueness is discussed in some details. The application is largely developed. One aspect is missing: a validation and an evaluation of the approach notably in terms of performance.

This paper is an extension of previous papers published by the authors especially in terms of implementation.

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for the very useful and encouraging comments. We tried to take into account the maximum of comments to improve the paper. We hope the answers and changes were made accordingly.

One aspect is missing: a validation and an evaluation of the approach notably in terms of performance.

Thank you for highlighting this aspect. Although the conceptual and application motivation of the paper is solid and surpasses (in our opinion) the performance aspect for digital humanities applications at this moment in time, we are aware of this and we include it in the critical discussion and future work (final section, lines 32-43). This future aspect will be specially relevant in a future with an important increase of the  volume of data in digital humanities projects, so we'll have to deal with aspects of scalability and performance.