The Ontology for Research and Innovation Policy Making

Research and Innovation (R&I) ecosystems involve data and knowledge flows across enterprises, academia, funding institutions, public authorities and citizens. Key R&I data elements are currently dispersed across a multitude of distinct and heterogeneous datasets; they are often neither in structured format nor systematically shared. Designing policies that affect R&I dynamics, and monitoring their impact in time, are tasks which require to overcome the limitations imposed by the usage of separated data silos, and to provide meaningful, integrated access to data with the appropriate granularity. In such a context, ontology-mediated data management can help bringing together inputs and outcomes from a variety of sources, in an open and interoperable fashion. The paper introduces UNiCS, an OWL-based ontology that has been recently developed with the main aim of driving semantic integration and access to R&I data, and to support the development of ontology-based data access (OBDA) platforms for R&I policy and decision makers.