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International Conference on Conceptual Modeling

ER 2020: Conceptual Modeling pp 289–302Cite as

Towards a Reference Ontology for Digital Platforms

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12400))

Abstract

Digital platforms can be categorized into different types including ‘multi-sided platform’, ‘digital marketplace’, ‘crowdfunding platform’, ‘sharing economy platform’ and ‘on-demand platform’. As there is a lack of knowledge regarding the requirements and design of these digital platform types, we developed a method to design a digital platform reference ontology based on a taxonomy. The taxonomy provides an overview of digital platform properties, with the property values expressing the possible variations between digital platforms depending on their type. For each property value, we can create a digital platform reference ontology module using the five-step approach proposed by Ruy et al. [1] based on the patterns of the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO). UFO is a high-level ontology that provides us with basic concepts for objects, events, social elements and their types, relations and properties. These digital platform reference ontology modules can be combined as building blocks to compose our reference ontology for expressing the functionality for digital platforms of all types. We believe this reference ontology can be a step towards a better understanding of digital platform functionality, better communication between stakeholders and eventually may facilitate future research and development of digital platforms.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The full sample of existing digital platforms we used in our validation can be found on http://model-a-platform.com/sample-of-existing-digital-platforms/.

  2. 2.

    Other ontology modules are still work in progress and published at http://model-a-platform.com/digital-platform-ontology/.

  3. 3.

    http://model-a-platform.com/validation-of-the-digital-platform-reference-ontology/.

  4. 4.

    http://model-a-platform.com/digital-platform-ontology/.

  5. 5.

    www.ubereats.com.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business Informatics and Operations Management, Ghent University, Tweekerkenstraat 2, 9000, Ghent, Belgium

    Thomas Derave, Frederik Gailly & Geert Poels

  2. Faculty of Computer Science, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bolzano, Italy

    Tiago Prince Sales

Authors
  1. Thomas Derave
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  2. Tiago Prince Sales
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  3. Frederik Gailly
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  4. Geert Poels
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Thomas Derave , Tiago Prince Sales , Frederik Gailly or Geert Poels .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Gillian Dobbie

  2. University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany

    Ulrich Frank

  3. TU Wien, Vienna, Austria

    Gerti Kappel

  4. Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA

    Stephen W. Liddle

  5. University of Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt am Wörthersee, Austria

    Heinrich C. Mayr

Appendix

Appendix

Fig. 6.
figure 6

Ontology application of Uber Eats

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Derave, T., Sales, T.P., Gailly, F., Poels, G. (2020). Towards a Reference Ontology for Digital Platforms. In: Dobbie, G., Frank, U., Kappel, G., Liddle, S.W., Mayr, H.C. (eds) Conceptual Modeling. ER 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12400. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62522-1_21

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62522-1_21

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-62522-1

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