Some decades have passed since the concept of “named entity” was used for the first time. Since then, new lines of research have
emerged in this environment, such as linking the (named) entity mentions in a text collection with their corresponding knowledge-base entries.
However, this introduces problems with respect to a consensus on the definition of the concept of “entity” in the literature. This paper aims to
highlight the importance of formalizing the concept of “entity” and the
benefits it would bring to the Entity Linking community, in particular
relating to the construction of gold standards for evaluation purposes.