How to cite
There are two distinct objects to cite: the forthcoming book, and the formal ontology rendered here. Cite whichever your work draws on, or both.
Citing the ontology artifact
The ontology has a persistent identifier through Zenodo. Cite it when you draw on its formal commitments, its BFO mapping of legal categories, or build derivative artifacts from it.
Chicago
In a footnote or endnote
David R. Koepsell, A Structural Ontology of the Law: A BFO-Aligned Formal Ontology, version 1.0 (Zenodo, 2026), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19713357.
APA
In a reference list
Koepsell, D. R. (2026). A Structural Ontology of the Law: A BFO-Aligned Formal Ontology (Version 1.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19713357
BibTeX
For LaTeX bibliographies
@misc{koepsell_sool_ontology,
author = {Koepsell, David R.},
title = {A Structural Ontology of the Law:
A BFO-Aligned Formal Ontology},
year = {2026},
publisher = {Zenodo},
version = {1.0},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.19713357},
url = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19713357},
note = {Formal artifact derived from the forthcoming book
of the same name (Palgrave). BFO-aligned,
consistency-validated by HermiT}
}
Citing the book
When the book is published, cite it directly for the arguments themselves. Until then, cite as forthcoming.
Chicago (forthcoming)
David R. Koepsell, A Structural Ontology of the Law (London: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming).
BibTeX (forthcoming)
@book{koepsell_sool_book,
author = {Koepsell, David R.},
title = {A Structural Ontology of the Law},
publisher = {Palgrave Macmillan},
year = {forthcoming}
}
What you should cite separately
The Basic Formal Ontology
Arp, R., Smith, B., and Spear, A. D. (2015). Building Ontologies with Basic Formal Ontology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
The HermiT reasoner
Glimm, B., Horrocks, I., Motik, B., Stoilos, G., and Wang, Z. (2014). HermiT: An OWL 2 reasoner. Journal of Automated Reasoning 53(3), 245–269.
BFO-Agent
Koepsell, D. R. (2026). BFO-Agent: A dialogue architecture for ontology extraction with reasoner-validated commitments. (forthcoming.)
Companion artifacts
Other BFO-aligned ontologies by the same author, which may be cited in parallel for comparison work:
Spinoza's Ethics at spinoza.davidkoepsell.com, Leibniz's philosophical works at leibniz.davidkoepsell.com, and The Geometry of the Good at gog.davidkoepsell.com.
A note on the source fragments
The source-text fragments shown in this site's viewer are short provenance markers, not quotable passages. If you wish to quote the book, cite the published edition once it is available rather than the fragments shown here, which are abbreviated and may not reflect final published wording.