PubLedge does not invent a new ontology. Every entity binds to a class in Semantic Arts gist (CC-BY 4.0), an open upper ontology of roughly 100 classes designed for cross-system interoperability. A pinned snapshot of gist core lives at /vendor/gist/.
Role mapping
| PubLedge role | Entity | gist class | IRI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Authority | Authority | gist:GovernmentOrganization | https://w3id.org/semanticarts/ns/ontology/gist/GovernmentOrganization |
| Container (interpretive) | Instrument (JIA) | gist:Agreement | https://w3id.org/semanticarts/ns/ontology/gist/Agreement |
| Container (enforceable) | Instrument (RMA) | gist:Contract | https://w3id.org/semanticarts/ns/ontology/gist/Contract |
| Secondary | Term | gist:ContractTerm | https://w3id.org/semanticarts/ns/ontology/gist/ContractTerm |
| Primary (must) | Obligation (requirement) | gist:Requirement | https://w3id.org/semanticarts/ns/ontology/gist/Requirement |
| Primary (must not) | Obligation (restriction) | gist:Restriction | https://w3id.org/semanticarts/ns/ontology/gist/Restriction |
| Primary (may) | Obligation (permission) | gist:Permission | https://w3id.org/semanticarts/ns/ontology/gist/Permission |
| Issuance event | Determination | gist:Determination | https://w3id.org/semanticarts/ns/ontology/gist/Determination |
| Statute reference | Statute citation | gist:ReferenceDocument | https://w3id.org/semanticarts/ns/ontology/gist/ReferenceDocument |
| Specification | Protocol | gist:Specification | https://w3id.org/semanticarts/ns/ontology/gist/Specification |
| Template | Fill-in template | gist:Template | https://w3id.org/semanticarts/ns/ontology/gist/Template |
Why gist
- Open license — CC-BY 4.0, no licensing friction.
- Small surface — ~100 classes, easy to learn end-to-end.
- OWL 2 DL — works with standard reasoners.
- Cross-domain — designed to bridge legal, contractual, organizational, and event vocabularies.
- Stable IRIs — w3id.org redirects, decoupled from any one host.
Machine binding
Every PubLedge frontmatter document carries an @type field whose value is a full gist IRI. The JSON-LD context at /schema/json/context.jsonld (published in a forthcoming v0.1 release) maps short names (Agreement, Contract, etc.) to those IRIs so that PubLedge JSON output validates as RDF without further configuration.
Example minimal frontmatter:
"@type": "https://w3id.org/semanticarts/ns/ontology/gist/Agreement"
issued_by:
"@type": "https://w3id.org/semanticarts/ns/ontology/gist/SubCountryGovernment"
name: "Utah Office of Artificial Intelligence Policy (OAIP)"What we do not bind
PubLedge declines to mint its own namespace until it encounters a concept gist cannot express. When that happens, the namespace will be https://w3id.org/publedge/ns/, and the addition will be documented here. As of v0.1.0-pre, no PubLedge-specific class is needed.