Ontology engineering step in design science research methodology: a technique to gather and reuse knowledge

Abstract

Design science (DS) is an emerging research paradigm in the information systems field. One of its challenges is to systematically structure knowledge for business solution artefacts. In this paper, we address this challenge by presenting an ontology engineering process. It structures gathered knowledge based on domain-specific concepts and relations. Application of the process results in an improvement in DS artefacts in terms of representational information quality. The goal of the paper is to place the ontology engineering process in the DS research methodology and provide pragmatic steps to follow the process.