Axiomatic improvements

[mikel-egana-aranguren]

• TRO aims to describe conflicts of interest, but an ontological analysis of the notion of conflict of interest seems to be lacking, at least as far as I read this article. For instance, this 2008 paper (doi: 10.1075/pc.16.3.06gre) articulates two meanings of the term "conflict".

• The author mentions personal relations in the second paragraph of Section 3.1. He may want to take a look at this 2012 paper (doi: 10.3233/978-1-61499-084-0-249) providing an ontological analysis of microsocial concepts.

• The notion of role is central to TRO. I would suggest that the author should consult existing formal theories of roles, as roles have been extensively investigated in the domain of applied ontology and the statement "Every person has a role" in Table 1 would conflict with many existing theories of roles. For example, see this 2021 paper (doi: 10.3233/AO-210244) for a quick overview of theories of roles. See also related parts of the papers included in the special issue about foundational ontologies of the journal Applied Ontology (https://content.iospress.com/journals/applied-ontology/17/1). In particular, it will be useful to read this 2004 paper (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221393610_Social_Roles_and_their_Descriptions), as the notion of description used in this paper is arguably closely related to the notion of evidence used in TRO.

• I would propose that the author should think more about the notion of organization, as its description "An organization" in Table 1 would be uninformative. There are many preceding works on an ontological analysis of organizations; for example, see Section 2.4 of this 2023 paper (doi: 10.3233/AO-230276) for a quick overview of them. The author may also want to take a look at this 2014 paper on group agency (doi: 10.3233/978-1-61499-438-1-183) and this 2018 paper (doi: 10.3233/978-1-61499-910-2-127) on organizational identity.

• Although the class Commitment is mentioned in the third paragraph of Section 3.1, it seems to remain uninvestigated by the author, as it is not explained in Table 1. It may be the case that an ontological analysis of the very notion of commitment may generally remain unexplored; but for some thoughts, see this 2012 paper (doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-28227-0-13) providing a commitment-based definition of services.