The data distillery concept and this domain started as part of a collaborative National Science Foundation project funded by EarthCube to develop a digital representation of the Earth's crust. I'm (more about me later) reviving the domain to continue experimenting on some of the concepts started there.
Check out the work on something called iSAID that is all about building linked open data from corporate master data. We're exploring concepts like alignment with the referenced and qualified claims on entities model used in Wikidata as an integration strategy for messy data on people, organizations, and scientific assets.
We is mostly Sky Bristol, right now, though I'm slowly roping others into this work. You can find me on GitHub and other places.