Ontology design facilitating Wikibase integration — and a worked example for historical data

Abstract

Wikibase – which is the software underlying Wikidata – is a powerful platform for knowledge graph creation and management. However, it has been developed with a crowd-sourced knowledge graph creation scenario in mind, which in particular means that it has not been designed for use case scenarios in which a tightly controlled high-quality schema, in the form of an ontology, is to be imposed, and indeed, independently developed ontologies do not necessarily map seamlessly to the Wikibase approach. In this paper, we provide the key ingredients needed in order to combine traditional ontology modeling with use of the Wikibase platform, namely a set of axiom patterns that bridge the paradigm gap, together with usage instructions and a worked example for historical data.