Abstract
Geographic information ontology represents an effective means of expressing geographic concepts and relationships between them. As an emerging field of study, it has drawn the attention of increasing numbers of scholars worldwide. In this study, both co-citation and cluster analysis methods of scientometrics are used to perform a comprehensive analysis of the papers on the topic of geographic information ontology indexed by the Web of Science (WoS) and published between 2001 and 2016. The results show that the history of the study of geographic information ontology can be divided roughly into three periods. Computer science and mathematics play important roles in this field of study. The International Journal of Geographical Information Science is an important periodical that provides knowledge resources for the study of geographic information ontology. The papers of Gruber TR and Guarino N are referenced most frequently, as well as that of Smith B., who formally introduced information ontology to the field of geographic information science. Providing personalized and intelligent geographic information services for users is an important focus of geographic information ontology.
Highlights
Ontology is a branch of philosophy that aims to provide systematic explanations or descriptions of an objective existence
The concept of geographic information ontology first appeared in the 1990s, when ontology was introduced into the field of geographic information science [3]
Geographic information ontology was developed in the 1990s when ontology was introduced into the field of geographic information science [3]
Summary
Ontology is a branch of philosophy that aims to provide systematic explanations or descriptions of an objective existence. By explicitly defining the concept of shared geographic concepts, information ontology is applied to the sharing and interoperation of geographic information and geographic information retrieval based on semantics, integration, and geographic information services [5]. Such studies can be regarded as applications of ontology that focus entirely on the integration and interoperation of geographic information that is based on semantics, but they do not consider the theory of geographic information ontology to a great degree
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