Review of Reference and Application Ontologies

This is a review of the paper Reference and Application Ontologies.

This paper describes the difference between reference and application ontologies, especially w.r.t. the motivation for using application ontologies.

I would add an abstract that clearly states the difference between reference ontology and application ontology and merge introduction with background, as the current introduction does not mention reference ontology, and it jumps direclty to background.

At the end of background, it seems like the motivation for application ontologies is some defficiencies on reference ontologies, but it is not that clear.

It is not clear whether the division of reference/domain ontology is the consequence of technical limitations or a necessary conceptual decision. That is, if we solved the technical problems on reference ontologies (i.e. interoperability, use of the same Upper Level Ontology, etc.) would we still need domain ontologies or not? I think the authors should ellaborate on this point.

It would be helpful to have a more thorough example on paragraph 1 of section “Motivation … “, with concrete ontologies.

I would add CCO as an example of domain ontology. The building of CCO, as (I believe) other domain ontologies, required a considerable technical effort, since domain ontologies collect and enrich information form other ontologies/resources. I would like to see a more in depth discussion of technical problems when building domain ontologies (importing, ids, solving semantic missmatchings, use of reasoners, etc.)

This paper should be accepted.