specificswho

Specificswho is a concept in information science and knowledge representation used to designate a person or agent whose identity is defined by a specific set of attributes. It aims to enable precise disambiguation in tasks such as search, question answering, and data integration by linking a person profile to a curated attribute bundle rather than relying on a name alone.

In formal models, a specificswho instance is typically represented as an individual with properties such as hasName, hasAffiliation, hasRole, hasDateOfBirth, and hasIdentifier. Ontologies may group these under a class called SpecificWho, and the instance can be connected to external identifiers like ORCID or employee IDs to enhance cross-system consistency.

Applications include entity linking in natural language processing, deduplication in bibliographic and customer relationship management databases, and cross-domain data integration where multiple records refer to the same agent. The approach supports more reliable disambiguation when attributes are available and maintained.

Example: a specificswho instance for Ada Lovelace might include hasName "Ada Lovelace", hasAffiliation "19th-century mathematician and writer" (historical), hasRole "mathematician", hasDateOfBirth "1815-12-10", hasIdentifier "ORCID: hypothetical-0000-0000-0000-0000" (hypothetical).

The term is not widely standardized and remains primarily in concept discussions and experimental schemas. Adoption depends on attribute availability, privacy considerations, and the presence of stable identifiers. See also entity disambiguation, knowledge graph, and named-entity recognition.