Sebastian Barzaghi (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0799-1527) Silvio Peroni (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0530-4305) Matteo Guenci (https://orcid.org/0009-0006-3139-1667) 2026-11-09 The **_Mention Typing Ontology (MiTO)_** is an OWL 2 DL ontology designed to formalize the concept of mentions, which are crucial for bibliometric analysis, as they allow researchers to track references to entities (e.g., software) in scholarly communication. MiTO introduces the following key concepts: * **Mention**, which represents the act of referring to or introducing the name of a person, entity, or concept in discourse. This class is defined with minimal restrictions to maximize usability across different contexts. * **MentionType**, which reifies the implicit or explicit nature of a mention, enabling users to classify mentions based on their characteristics. Mentions can be explicit (e.g., directly stated references in text, as when stated into an article _Dr. Johnson's groundbreaking research on climate change_) or implicit (e.g., indirect references to entities or concepts, such as discussing "seminal studies in the field"). MiTO also defines several object properties to describe relationships between mentions and entities: * `mito:mentions` and its inverse `mito:isMentionedBy`, which connect the two sides involved in the act of mentioning. * `mito:hasMentionedEntity`, which relates a mention to the entity being mentioned. * `mito:hasMentioningEntity`, which relates a mention to the entity performing the act of mentioning. * `mito:hasMentionType`, which defines the implicit or explicit character of the mention.  MiTO is designed to integrate with other SPAR ontologies, which provides a modular framework for describing crucial aspects of bibliographic entities and their metadata. ## Examples of use In the following subsections, we introduce some examples to showcase how to use MiTO. The prefixes that are used in all the examples provided below are defined as follows: @prefix : <http://www.sparontologies.net/example/> . @prefix mito: <http://purl.org/spar/mito/> . @prefix fabio: <http://purl.org/spar/fabio/> . @prefix oa: <http://www.w3.org/ns/oa#> . @prefix dcterms: <http://purl.org/dc/terms/> . @prefix foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/> . @prefix cnt: <http://www.w3.org/2011/content#> . @prefix c4o: <http://purl.org/spar/c4o/> . @prefix per: <http://data.semanticweb.org/person/> . ### Defining mention links and their types (direct vs reified) MiTO lets you connect two resources where one (the _mentioning entity_, e.g., a paper) mentions another (the _mentioned entity_, e.g., a software, dataset, method), optionally qualifying the mention with a _mention type_ (e.g., explicit/implicit). As with [CiTO](http://purl.org/spar/cito), you can use a direct triple (`mito:mentions`) or a reified mention (`mito:Mention`) to which you can attach further metadata such as the mention type. :ml-paper-2024 a fabio:JournalArticle ; dcterms:title "Deep Learning Approaches for Medical Image Segmentation" ; mito:mentions :tensorflow . :tensorflow a fabio:ComputerProgram ; foaf:name "TensorFlow" ; mito:isMentionedBy :ml-paper-2024 . :mention-tensorflow a mito:Mention ; mito:hasMentioningEntity :ml-paper-2024 ; mito:hasMentionedEntity :tensorflow ; mito:hasMentionType mito:explicit . :vision-paper a fabio:JournalArticle ; dcterms:title "Novel Architectures for Biomedical Image Classification" . :imagenet a fabio:Dataset ; dcterms:title "ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge Dataset" . :vision-paper mito:mentions :imagenet . :dataset-mention a mito:Mention ; mito:hasMentioningEntity :vision-paper ; mito:hasMentionedEntity :imagenet ; mito:hasMentionType mito:explicit . :mention-annotation a oa:Annotation ; oa:motivatedBy oa:commenting ; oa:hasTarget :dataset-mention ; oa:hasBody :usage-context . :usage-context a cnt:ContentAsText ; cnt:chars "ImageNet is used exclusively for pre-training the backbone network, not for final model evaluation." . :nlp-paper a fabio:JournalArticle ; dcterms:title "Contextual Embeddings for Scientific Text Classification" . :bert-method a fabio:ResearchPaper ; dcterms:title "Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers" . :bert-mention a mito:Mention ; mito:hasMentioningEntity :nlp-paper ; mito:hasMentionedEntity :bert-method ; mito:hasMentionType mito:explicit . :bert-pointer a c4o:InTextReferencePointer ; c4o:hasContent "[BERT]" . :pointer-annotation a oa:Annotation ; oa:hasTarget :bert-pointer ; oa:hasBody :bert-mention ; oa:annotatedBy per:research-team . :nlp-paper mito:mentions :bert-method . :stats-paper a fabio:JournalArticle ; dcterms:title "Bayesian Approaches to Uncertainty Quantification in Deep Learning" . :bayesian-theory a fabio:ResearchPaper ; dcterms:title "Bayesian Statistical Inference" . :stats-paper mito:mentions :bayesian-theory . :implicit-theory-mention a mito:Mention ; mito:hasMentioningEntity :stats-paper ; mito:hasMentionedEntity :bayesian-theory ; mito:hasMentionType mito:implicit . :implicit-annotation a oa:Annotation ; oa:motivatedBy oa:commenting ; oa:hasTarget :implicit-theory-mention ; oa:hasBody :implicit-explanation . :implicit-explanation a cnt:ContentAsText ; cnt:chars "Bayesian theory is applied throughout the methodology but never explicitly referenced by name." . ## Competency Questions MiTO can be used for answering several questions related to mentions in scholarly resources. In the following subsections, some of them are introduced together with their respective SPARQL queries. The prefixes that are used in all the SPARQL queries provided below are defined as follows: PREFIX mito: <http://purl.org/spar/mito/> PREFIX dcterms: <http://purl.org/dc/terms/> PREFIX foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/> PREFIX oa: <http://www.w3.org/ns/oa#> PREFIX cnt: <http://www.w3.org/2011/content#> PREFIX c4o: <http://purl.org/spar/c4o/> ### CQ1 Which entities are mentioned by a document, along with their types and titles? SELECT ?document ?mentionedEntity ?entityType ?entityName WHERE { ?document mito:mentions ?mentionedEntity . ?mentionedEntity a ?entityType . OPTIONAL { ?mentionedEntity dcterms:title ?entityName . } OPTIONAL { ?mentionedEntity foaf:name ?entityName . } } ### CQ2 What are the mentions, their types, and the entities involved? SELECT ?mention ?mentioningEntity ?mentionedEntity ?mentionType WHERE { ?mention a mito:Mention ; mito:hasMentioningEntity ?mentioningEntity ; mito:hasMentionedEntity ?mentionedEntity ; mito:hasMentionType ?mentionType . } ### CQ3 What textual comments or annotations target a specific mention? SELECT ?mention ?mentionType ?commentText WHERE { ?mention a mito:Mention ; mito:hasMentionType ?mentionType . ?annotation a oa:Annotation ; oa:hasTarget ?mention ; oa:hasBody ?body . ?body cnt:chars ?commentText . } ### CQ4 Which in-text reference pointers are linked to a mention via annotations? SELECT ?pointer ?pointerContent ?mention ?mentionedEntity ?annotator WHERE { ?pointer a c4o:InTextReferencePointer ; c4o:hasContent ?pointerContent . ?annotation a oa:Annotation ; oa:hasTarget ?pointer ; oa:hasBody ?mention . ?mention a mito:Mention ; mito:hasMentionedEntity ?mentionedEntity . OPTIONAL { ?annotation oa:annotatedBy ?annotator . } } The Mention Typing Ontology (MiTO) Pride, D., Guenci, M., Docekal, M., Peroni, S., & Knoth, P. (2025, December). Identifying and classifying software mentions in full text scholarly documents. In 2025 ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) (pp. 261-264). IEEE. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/JCDL67857.2025.00041 2024-05-09 2024-05-09 2026-11-09 TBA mito http://purl.org/spar/mito 1.1.2 SPAR Ontologies OWL ontology semantic publishing scholarly communication bibliometrics scientometrics mentions software mentions research software is mentioned by :my-software a fabio:Software ; dcterms:title "Tensorflow" ; mito:isMentionedBy :my-journal-article . The relation between the two sides involved in the act of mentioning, with one entity being mentioned by the other. has mentioning entity :my-mention a mito:Mention ; mito:hasMentioningEntity :my-mentioning-entity . The relation between a mention and a mentioning entity. has mention type :my-mention a mito:Mention ; mito:hasMentionType mito:explicit . The relation between a mention and the characterisation of that mention. mention type :my-mention a mito:Mention ; mito:hasMentionType mito:explicit . mito:explicit a mito:MentionType . The reified implicit or explicit characteristic of a mention. mention :my-mention a mito:Mention ; mito:hasMentioningEntity :my-mentioning-entity ; mito:hasMentionedEntity :my-mentioned-entity ; mito:hasMentionType mito:explicit . The action or an act of referring to, remarking upon, or introducing the name of a person or thing in spoken or written discourse, often incidentally and as not necessarily essential to the discussion. Originally: the action of calling to mind or commemorating something in speech or writing. situation A view on a set of entities. It can be seen as a _relational context_, reifying a relation. mentions :my-journal-article a fabio:JournalArticle ; dcterms:title "Deep Learning Approaches for Medical Image Segmentation" ; mito:mentions :my-software . The relation between the two sides involved in the act of mentioning, with one entity mentioning the other. 1 is mentioned entity of :my-mentioned-entity mito:isMentionedEntityOf :my-mention . :my-mention a mito:Mention . The relation between a mentioned entity and a mention. has mentioned entity :my-mention a mito:Mention ; mito:hasMentionedEntity :my-mentioned-entity . The relation between a mention and a mentioned entity. explicit :my-mention a mito:Mention ; mito:hasMentioningEntity :my-mentioning-entity ; mito:hasMentionedEntity :my-mentioned-entity ; mito:hasMentionType mito:explicit . A type of mention according to which there is a direct, unambiguous, and literal naming or stating of something within a text. implicit :my-mention a mito:Mention ; mito:hasMentioningEntity :my-mentioning-entity ; mito:hasMentionedEntity :my-mentioned-entity ; mito:hasMentionType mito:implicit . A type of mention according to which something is suggested or understood through context rather than named directly within a text. 1 is setting for The relation between a situation and something that situation is a setting for. is mentioning entity of :my-mentioning-entity mito:isMentioningEntityOf :my-mention . :my-mention a mito:Mention . The relation between a mentioning entity and a mention. 1