Editorial: An Ontology of E-Commerce - Mapping a Relevant Corpus of Knowledge

As in any emerging field, the exploration, theorization and application of knowledge requires significant efforts to systematically and systemically discover the varied avenues in which theory and practice contribute to the development and maturation of the scientific field. The meta-analysis of a significant and representative corpus of knowledge in e-commerce using an ontological framework can identify the concentrations and omissions within it. It can shed light on the definition of research agendas. Thus, it denotes a significant contribution for the further and effective development of a field whose scope and complexity is growing. This study focuses on the population of peer reviewed papers in a specialized journal on e-commerce, where theoretical as well as applied research articles are published. Of the 196 articles and reviews, 45 were coded on all the dimensions. A total of 924 components out of the possible 64,800 in the ontology are instantiated in the corpus. The 924 instantiated components occur 1,044 times in the corpus.