Abstract
Abstract The aim of this critical review paper is threefold: (a) to provide an insight on the impact of ontology engineering methodologies (OEMs) to the evolution of living and reused ontologies, (b) to update the ontology engineering (OE) community on the status and trends in OEMs and of their use in practice and (c) to propose a set of recommendations for working ontologists to consider during the life cycle of living, evolved and reused ontologies. The work outlined in this critical review paper has been motivated by the need to address critical issues on keeping ontologies alive and evolving while these are shared in wide communities. It is argued that the engineering of ontologies must follow a well-defined methodology, addressing practical aspects that would allow (sometimes wide) communities of experts and ontologists to reach consensus on developments and keep the evolution of ontologies ‘in track’. In doing so, specific collaborative and iterative tool-supported tasks and phases within a complete and evaluated ontology life cycle are necessary. This way the engineered ontologies can be considered ‘shared, commonly agreed and continuously evolved “live” conceptualizations’ of domains of discourse. Today, in the era of Linked Data and Knowledge Graphs, it is more necessary than ever not to neglect to consider the recommendations that OEMs explicitly and implicitly introduce and their implications to the evolution of living ontologies. This paper reports on the status of OEMs, identifies trends and provides recommendations based on the findings of an analysis that concerns the impact of OEMs to the status of well-known, widely used and representative ontologies.
Highlights
Ontology is an agreed and shared formal representation of knowledge, a model of formal specification regarding naming and definition of types, properties and interrelationships of entities that exist in a particular domain of discourse
Starting from this conjecture and based on several surveys on ontology engineering methodologies (OEMs) (Uschold & Gruninger, 1996; Fernández-López & Gómez-Pérez, 2002; Corcho et al, 2003; Iqbal et al, 2013; Stadlhofer et al, 2013; Simperl & Luczak-Rösch, 2014; Yadav et al, 2016), we focus on methodologies that do meet the following two major requirements that are widely accepted from the org/10.1017/S0269888920000065 engineering (OE) research community: (a) Emphasize on the active and decisive involvement of knowledge engineers, workers and domain experts in all phases of OE, that is, in the phases of ontology specification, ontology development, ontology exploitation and ontology evaluation
These trends are evidenced by the following main findings: Finding 1: The stakeholder needs for collaboration and technology support seem to be the most probable cause for their decision to device and use custom-engineered OEMs and support them by the use of collaborative tools towards achieving their goals
Summary
Ontology is an agreed and shared formal representation of knowledge, a model of formal specification regarding naming and definition of types, properties and interrelationships of entities that exist in a particular domain of discourse. Given the requirements for the ontologies that must be developed in the context of a problem-solving task, we conjecture that, ideally, an ontology engineering methodology (OEM) must support all involved stakeholders during the ontology life cycle, that is, from the development of seed ontologies to the continuous evolution and maintenance of ontologies, keeping them ‘live’ to shape knowledge Starting from this conjecture and based on several surveys on OEMs (Uschold & Gruninger, 1996; Fernández-López & Gómez-Pérez, 2002; Corcho et al, 2003; Iqbal et al, 2013; Stadlhofer et al, 2013; Simperl & Luczak-Rösch, 2014; Yadav et al, 2016), we focus on methodologies that do meet the following two major requirements that are widely accepted from the OE research community:
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
