GMEOW Coreference Module

• IRI: https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/slices/coreference
• Tier: core
• Group: core

What This Slice Covers

This slice owns 5 terms and contributes 15 mapping or projection rows. Use it when its terms match the native fact you want to preserve; use the linkage tables to see how those facts leave GMEOW for consumer vocabularies.

Dependencies

• gmeow:slices/documents
• gmeow:slices/kernel

Consumers

• Authority links from every slice to Wikidata and registries (P5, never owl:sameAs).

Local Map

Examples

Authority Links

• Source: slices/core/coreference/examples/authority-links.ttl
• GMEOW terms: gmeow:CreativeWork, gmeow:Person, gmeow:SoftwareAgent, gmeow:authorityLink, gmeow:counterpartOf, gmeow:editionOf, gmeow:name, gmeow:supersedes, gmeow:title
• External prefixes: owl, skos

# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2026 Blackcat Informatics® Inc. <paudley@blackcatinformatics.ca>
# SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0
#
# Worked example: coreference WITHOUT identity merge. A locally-recorded
# person is linked to two external authority records — a confident match and a
# near (uncertain) one — using gmeow:authorityLink (the flat pointer) alongside
# skos:exactMatch / skos:closeMatch (graded alignment). GMEOW NEVER asserts
# owl:sameAs to an external entity (Principle 5): identity is aligned by
# reference, with confidence, never collapsed. A creative work and its later
# annotated edition show the intra-corpus coreference edges (editionOf,
# supersedes) that relate distinct records of the "same" thing.
@prefix gmeow: <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/> .
@prefix ex:    <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/examples/coreference/> .
@prefix skos:  <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#> .

# --- A locally-recorded person aligned to external authorities. The exact match
#     is asserted with confidence; the near one stays a CLOSE (not exact) match,
#     so a downstream consumer can choose its own merge threshold.
ex:recordedAuthor a gmeow:Person ;
    gmeow:name "Lin Saito"@en ;
    gmeow:authorityLink <https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1825-0097> ,
                        <http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q42> ;
    skos:exactMatch <https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1825-0097> ;
    skos:closeMatch <http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q42> .

# --- A field-robot software identity that is the SAME agent across contexts as
#     the recorded author's account — a counterpart, not a sameAs merge.
ex:fieldRobotIdentity a gmeow:SoftwareAgent ;
    gmeow:name "lin-field-robot"@en ;
    gmeow:counterpartOf ex:recordedAuthor .

# --- Intra-corpus coreference: a work, its annotated edition (a distinct record
#     that is an edition OF the first and SUPERSEDES it for citation).
ex:fieldNotes a gmeow:CreativeWork ;
    gmeow:title "Coastal Field Notes"@en .

ex:fieldNotesAnnotated a gmeow:CreativeWork ;
    gmeow:title "Coastal Field Notes, annotated edition"@en ;
    gmeow:editionOf ex:fieldNotes ;
    gmeow:supersedes ex:fieldNotes .

Terms

Properties

Linkages

• Rows: 15
• Projection profiles: dcterms, oai_dc, schema-org
• External vocabularies: dc, dcterms, mads, prov, schema, wdt, whg

Guide

Coreference — identity by reference, never by merger

Slice: https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/slices/coreference · tier: core The slice that lets GMEOW point at the rest of the world's records without ever marrying them.

Universal identity and coreference links: stable GMEOW entities link to external records and cross-realm counterparts by reference, never by owl:sameAs merger. Wikidata is the recommended hub, but all authority records remain external claims that may be exact, close, contested, or standpoint-indexed.

The doctrine is Principle 5 applied to identity. owl:sameAs is a logical sledgehammer: it merges every property of both nodes, propagates upstream errors as entailments, and collapses standpoints that were deliberately kept apart. GMEOW therefore never asserts it across system boundaries. The stable entity is the GMEOW node itself; an external record is an authority reference attached with gmeow:authorityLink, and the strength of the coreference is a separate, explicit claim (skos:exactMatch / skos:closeMatch in instance data). A contested identification is several standpoint-indexed claims that coexist (Principle 9); a withdrawn one is suppressed with gmeow:displayable false, never deleted (Principle 10).

The same by-reference stance covers identity within the graph: counterparts across realms and frames stay linked but unmerged, and version/edition/supersession lineage keeps every member of the lineage first-class.

Authority and counterpart links

gmeow:authorityLink

The universal pointer from a GMEOW entity to a record in an external authority, registry, database, gazetteer, or catalogue — by IRI, range intentionally open. It is a see-also authority pointer, not an OWL identity merge; assert match strength separately with skos:exactMatch or skos:closeMatch. Wikidata is the recommended hub because its cross-references reach most other authorities — one well-chosen QID buys VIAF, GeoNames, and ORCID transitively (the maximal-linkage convention curl-validates QIDs at gate time).

gmeow:counterpartOf

Symmetric — and deliberately not transitive — linkage between two GMEOW entities that are recognisable counterparts across realms, datasets, editions, or modelling contexts without being safely mergeable: the historical person and their fictionalized portrayal, the same place in two gazetteers' worldviews. Non-transitivity is the point: counterpart chains must not silently weld A to C through B.

Version, edition, and supersession lineage

gmeow:versionOf

Relates a concrete version entity to the stable lineage entity it versions — a language version to its language, a software release to its project, a data release to its dataset. Functional (a version belongs to one lineage); the lineage has many versions.

gmeow:editionOf

The creative-work specialization: a concrete edition, issue, or manifestation pointing to the stable work it editions. Functional per edition, non-merge semantics — editions remain first-class CreativeWorks with their own identifiers, dates, rights, and provenance. Bridges directly to the WEMI spine in documents/creative-works.

gmeow:supersedes

Relates a newer entity, version, record, or claim-bearing artifact to a prior one it replaces. Non-functional: one successor may consolidate several predecessors. The superseded entity is retained and usable (Principle 10); suppression from display is a separate decision (gmeow:displayable false). The lifecycle slice supplies the inverse (gmeow:supersededBy) and the event-shaped view (gmeow:eventTypeSupersession) when the replacement itself needs a date, location, or participants.

Solver layer & deferred alignment

Entity resolution — deciding that two records corefer, scoring the match, clustering candidates — is solver-layer computation (Principle 12): the slice records asserted links and their declared strengths; it never derives identity. The SKOS mapping vocabulary is consumed by reference in instance data (Principle 5), and the maximal-linkage doctrine expects every slice to exercise these links — coreference is the one slice whose job is to be everyone else's out-edge.

Dependencies

Depends on kernel and documents (the CreativeWork range of editionOf). Consumed by every slice that links to Wikidata and external registries — which, under the maximal-linkage convention, is all of them.