The role of ontologies in Linked Data, Big Data and Semantic Web applications

Since the beginnings of the Semantic Web, ontologies have played key roles in the design and deployment of new semantic technologies. Yet over the years, the level of collaboration between the Semantic Web and Applied Ontology communities has been much less than expected. Within Big Data applications, ontologies appear to have had little impact. These communities, along with the Linked Data community, all share the need for a common semantic understanding and a formal representation of the domains being studied, but they have taken very different approaches to deal with the challenges of large scale applications and linking of vast heterogeneous data. Because of this situation, the Ontology Summit 2014 focused on building bridges between these four communities. It was felt that identifying and overcoming ontology engineering bottlenecks is critical for all of these communities. This special issue is an effort to continue the process that began in 2014. The papers in this issue are concerned with the various aspects of the barriers identified at the Ontology Summit, and propose approaches for addressing them.