Extensions of CIDOC-CRM: Responses to the Need for Knowledge Organization in Subject Domains

Ontologies are instrumental in organization of knowledge in the semantic web context. However, there is a need for extensions to match characteristics of different subject domains. This paper reports existing extensions proposed for CIDOC-CRM.

The keywords Extension and CIDOC-CRM were searched in a variety of search engines and databases like Google Scholar, Science Direct, Emerald, Ebsco and ResearchGate. More than 50 papers were retrieved and abstracts were examined out of which we carefully reviewed full-texts of 21 for this paper.

Fourteen extensions have been formally proposed for CIDOC-CRM so far each to meet the needs of a subject domain. Some have used other extensions in addition to CIDOC-CRM. Most extensions have used CRMsci. Archaeology is suitable for extension. All existing extensions are developed by harmonizing concepts of subject domains with CIDOC-CRM.

Our review showed that subject extensions on the CIDOC-CRM are needed. Further extensions for other domains can enrich the datasets on semantic web.