Ontology Research Research Articles

Agent-based ontology mapping and integration towards interoperability

Abstract: Interoperability is an important issue in ontology research. In this paper, a novel agent-based framework for managing ontologies in a dynamic environment is developed. The framework has several key characteristics such as flexibility and extensibility that differentiate this research from others. Based on the proposed framework, ontology mapping and integration are investigated. It is believed that inter-ontology processes like ontology mapping with logical semantics are foundations of ontology-based applications. Accordingly, several types of semantic relations are proposed and corresponding mapping mechanisms are developed. Based on mapping results, ontology integration is developed to provide abstract views for participating organizations in the presence of a variety of ontologies. A prototype is built to demonstrate the design and functionalities and is applied to beer ontologies. The prototype shows that the framework is not only flexible but also practical. All agents derived from the framework exhibit their behaviours as expected.

Book Review: Justin Cruickshank Realism and Sociology:Anti-foundationalism, Ontology and Social Research London: Routledge, 2003, £75.00 hbk, no price stated pbk (ISBN: 0415261902), x+172 pp

Book Review: Justin Cruickshank Realism and Sociology:Anti-foundationalism, Ontology and Social Research London: Routledge, 2003, £75.00 hbk, no price stated pbk (ISBN: 0415261902), x+172 pp

Web information fusion: A review of the state of the art

In this paper, we introduce and overview advances in the field of Web information fusion and integration. As it is such a broad and diverse topic that is researched in many different fields, we choose to provide a unified view by focusing on selected survey articles that extensively cover earlier research contributions. Given the important role that ontologies are playing in Web information fusion and the emergence and fast development of the Semantic Web and Web 3.0 technologies, a separate section is devoted to the topic of ontology research and the Semantic Web. Then, in the section on Web-based support systems, several applications that are enabled as the result of advances in Web information fusion are discussed.

Special Issue on “Engineering Informatics”

Special Issue on “Engineering Informatics”

The Impact of Ontology on the Performance of Information Retrieval

The debate on the effectiveness of ontology in solving semantic problems has increased recently in many domains of information technology. One side of the debate accepts the inclusion of ontology as a suitable solution. The other side of the debate argues that ontology is far from an ideal solution to the semantic problem. This article explores this debate in the area of information retrieval. Several past approaches were explored and a new approach was investigated to test the effectiveness of a generic ontology such as WordNet in improving the performance of information retrieval systems. The test and the analysis of the experiments suggest that WordNet is far from the ideal solution in solving semantic problems in the information retrieval. However, several observations have been made and reported in this article that allow research in ontology for the information retrieval to move towards the right direction.

Searching for uses and users in Gene Ontology research

Searching for uses and users in Gene Ontology research

ODAP: an ontological approach for expressing the semantics of analysis patterns in conceptual modeling

Systematic software reuse is emerging as a promising route to improved software development productivity and quality. While many benefits of patterns reuse have been identified, there is a need to develop a mechanism for supporting and automating the reuse of relevant analysis patterns for conceptual modeling. To enable effective reuse of analysis patterns, extant approaches require judgment about correctly instantiating and combining the analysis patterns. Building on prior research in ontology and conceptual modeling, we propose a "top-down" approach, referred to as Ontology for Describing Analysis Patterns (ODAP), to explicitly express the semantics of analysis patterns. We show how ODAP helps provide a mechanism to identify appropriate instances of analysis patterns including the discovery of valid combinations with other patterns in a patterns base. Thus, ODAP can enable communication of the meaning of the analysis pattern constructs to modelers and be the basis for a design support environment that supports the development of conceptual schemas using analysis patterns.

Deconstructing a personal “academic”/“practitioner” narrative through self‐reflexivity

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to self‐reflexively deconstruct a paper published by the author in 1996 about a Singaporean entrepreneur for whom the author worked. Through the deconstruction a number of important methodological and epistemological issues are raised. Firstly, the way in which the value of qualitative research in management and organization studies is judged more by how it conforms to acceptable ways of data collection, analysis and interpretation (strategic apparatus) than on any “truth” value it may have. Secondly, a consideration of how the “I” of the researcher is influential in how research is undertaken and written up. Thirdly, that this “I” of the researcher is also determined by what is acceptable “scientific” discourse and by other prevailing discourses.Design/methodology/approachIn a paper published in 1996, the author detailed the “dark side” of an entrepreneur for whom he worked. Using a psychoanalytic framework this paper constructed the entrepreneur as an irrational and unethical incompetent. In the present paper, this earlier work is deconstructed using insights from Derrida's in order to highlight “strategic exclusions,” and to offer alternative readings. These alternative readings emphasize the influence of various discourses on the construction of the earlier paper, and also introduce a reading of the earlier paper as a psychoanalytic narrative.FindingsThe paper highlights the uses to which “objective tools” of analysis can be put in order to manipulate and construct an explanation and interpretation of personal experiences. This raises important epistemological issues concerning the influence of broader discourses on the representation of experiences and how realities and identities are constructed and performed. The paper concludes by suggesting that whom we are as researchers, and what we observe and write, is more complex and influenced by more discourse(s) than we might think. Even if researchers tell impressionistic and confessional tales simultaneously with their realist ones, it is necessary to consider what discourses may lay behind their telling. It has been argued that a limitation of deconstruction is that it may result in endless iterations and readings of text with no discursive closure. This may be a limitation of the deconstruction offered here.Originality/valueThe paper raises questions about the nature of the “academic” narrative and the importance of deconstruction in establishing author positioning within narrative. It contributes to the discussion about objectivity in organizational and management research and issues of epistemology and ontology more generally.

Possible Ontologies: How Reality Constrains the Development of Relevant Ontologies

For years, ontologies have been known in computer science as consensual models of domains of discourse, usually implemented as formal definitions of the relevant conceptual entities. Researchers have written much about the potential benefits of using them, and most of us regard ontologies as central building blocks of the semantic Web and other semantic systems. Unfortunately, the number and quality of actual, "non-toy" ontologies available on the Web today is remarkably low. This implies that the semantic Web community has yet to build practically useful ontologies for a lot of relevant domains in order to make the semantic Web a reality. Theoretically minded advocates often assume that the lack of ontologies is because the "stupid business people haven't realized ontologies' enormous benefits." As a liberal market economist, the author assumes that humans can generally figure out what's best for their well-being, at least in the long run, and that they act accordingly. In other words, the fact that people haven't yet created as many useful ontologies as the ontology research community would like might indicate either unresolved technical limitations or the existence of sound rationales for why individuals refrain from building them - or both. Indeed, several social and technical difficulties exist that put a brake on developing and eventually constrain the space of possible ontologies

Formalization Matters: Critical GIS and Ontology Research

There have been several obstacles to an embrace of critical theoretical work in GIScience; chief among them is the barrier between conceptualization and formalization. Early critics of the technology were not cognizant that technological change must be implemented within the language of code. While critics expressed their concerns in a theoretical and esoteric language, increasingly GIScientists are at pains to address the same issues so that solutions can be incorporated into software technologies. Indeed an implicit recognition of the important divide between informal and formal environments has aided GIScience researchers in developing strategies to represent multiple epistemologies in GIS. The article begins with a review of early critical GIScience, examines the degree of its acceptance in the light of a content analysis of GIS journals, and then illustrates that the issue of multiple representation of the same reality is being addressed under the rubric of ontologies. New research in this area has had significant impact on GIScience because it has been articulated and addressed at both the conceptual and formal stages—a criterion for real changes to both GISystems and GIScience. The article concludes with an examination of why critical GIS remains relevant to the discipline, in spite of efforts to address issues of representation within GIScience.

Ontology‐Based Metadata

It is even more remarkable to some of us that up to this point, there has been no thoroughgoing discussion by GIS practitioners and theorists about the epistemology of their subject, the ontology of their objects, and the political commitments embedded in their practices.(Pickles 1997, p. 364) AbstractMetadata are an extant mechanism for conveying ontological information about semantic data. Metadata have the advantage of being institutionally and structurally ensconced in GIS. At present, however, they lack fields to express information beyond the technical and geometric domain. This paper describes a framework for the creation of extended metadata for non‐spatial attributes, with the goal of incorporating ontological context. We use an informatics interpretation of ontology which refers to the total universe of discourse associated with a given attribute (database field). In other words, an ontology is the possible range of meaning offered by an encoded field. Current ontology research in GIScience has focused on data structuring and modelling. Implementation of these schemes demands restructuring of existing relational database models. An alternative is to extend current metadata schemes (e.g. ISO 19115) to include context‐based and tacit information about semantic attributes. Such ontology‐based extended metadata permits data selection and interoperability decisions that are ultimately more defensible. We have developed eight preliminary fields to add to existing metadata frameworks that will enable ontological context to travel with the data. This paper illustrates a preliminary implementation based on the integration of non‐commensurate cadastral data. The results illustrate the value of ontology‐based metadata in highlighting descriptive and substantive differences between similar classification systems. Recognition of semantic heterogeneity is the basis for creating defensible data linkages between multiple datasets. The development of ontology‐based metadata is profoundly different from the current trend to incorporate ontological context at the model level in GIScience. It is pragmatic, however, in that it presents a vehicle for incorporating use‐context with data in a manner that is accessible; requires little re‐engineering; and is intuitively understood by GIS users. Moreover, ontology‐based metadata are a mechanism for addressing Pickles’ (1997) concern about the ontology of spatial objects in GIS.

A survey on ontology mapping

Ontology is increasingly seen as a key factor for enabling interoperability across heterogeneous systems and semantic web applications. Ontology mapping is required for combining distributed and heterogeneous ontologies. Developing such ontology mapping has been a core issue of recent ontology research. This paper presents ontology mapping categories, describes the characteristics of each category, compares these characteristics, and surveys tools, systems, and related work based on each category of ontology mapping. We believe this paper provides readers with a comprehensive understanding of ontology mapping and points to various research topics about the specific roles of ontology mapping.

Comparing relationships in conceptual modeling: mapping to semantic classifications

Much of the research that deals with understanding the real world and representing it in a conceptual model uses some form of the entity-relationship model as a means of representation. This research proposes an ontology for classifying relationship verb phrases based upon the domain and context of the application within which the relationship appears. The classification categories to which the verb phrases are mapped were developed based upon prior research in databases, ontologies, and linguistics. The usefulness of the ontology for comparing relationships when used in conjunction with an entity ontology is discussed. Together, these ontologies can be effective in comparing two conceptual database designs for integration and validation. Empirical testing of the ontology on a number of relationships from different application domains and contexts illustrates the usefulness of the research.

The unexpected high practical value of medical ontologies

Ontology is no longer a mere research topic, but its relevance has been recognized in several practical fields. Current applications areas include natural language translation, e-commerce, geographic information systems, legal information systems and biology and medicine. It is the backbone of solid and effective applications in health care and can help to build more powerful and more interoperable medical information systems. The design and implementation of ontologies in medicine is mainly focused on the re-organization of medical terminologies. This is obviously a difficult task and requires a deep analysis of the structure and the concepts of such terminologies, in order to define domain ontologies able to provide both flexibility and consistency to medical information systems. The aim of this special issue of Computers in Biology and Medicine is to report the current evolution of research in biomedical ontologies, presenting both papers devoted to methodological issues and works with a more applicative emphasys.

Ontological research and its applications to the biomedical domain

AbstractOntology is an area of philosophy “the science of what is, of the kinds and structures of objects, properties, events and relations in every area of reality” (Smith & Welty, 2001). In computer and information science ontology is used to represent the common understanding and concepts related to a specific domain. In this sense, an ontology includes a set of generic concepts as well as their definitions and relationships. The main purpose of using an ontology is to present the shared view of the knowledge of a domain. Other advantages of ontologies are that they provide computer systems with a way to specify concepts, allow interoperability and reusability, and ultimately represent a way to relate the concepts expressed in our computer information systems with the real objects that they represent. This panel will present a general overview of the current issues on ontological research its applications in biomedicine. The panel includes presentations on the state‐of‐the‐art in ontology research as well as several applications in the biomedical domain.

An ontology research pipeline

An ontology research pipeline

Semantic integration

Semantic integration is an active area of research in several disciplines, such as databases, information-integration, and ontologies. This paper provides a brief survey of the approaches to semantic integration developed by researchers in the ontology community. We focus on the approaches that differentiate the ontology research from other related areas. The goal of the paper is to provide a reader who may not be very familiar with ontology research with introduction to major themes in this research and with pointers to different research projects. We discuss techniques for finding correspondences between ontologies, declarative ways of representing these correspondences, and use of these correspondences in various semantic-integration tasks

Towards a new synthesis of ontology technology and knowledge management

This paper provides a synthesis of ontology research and one of its most significant application areas, the business discipline of Knowledge Management (KM). Despite the fact such a synergy is in great demand between consumers and suppliers of ontology technology, there is a lack of understanding on one side and a lack of realism on the other. Due to the lack of communication and understanding between ontology research and applied KM there is the danger that mainstream KM will remain neutral to ontologies, while research develops as a largely unguided exploration.

From “Onto-GeoNoesis” to “Onto-Genesis”: The Design of Geographic Ontologies

An important issue in geographic ontological research is the ability to design new ontologies. In this context, we first explore the desiderata of domain ontologies in terms of their constituting elements: i.e., the lexicon, concepts, relations, and axioms. Furthermore, we touch upon several characteristics of geographic concepts, which have puzzled geographic information scientists, and present critical topics of geographic ontological research. Based on the previous aspects of the problem, and guided by prior work of analyzing existent geographic ontologies, we have identified their qualities and deficiencies with regard to completeness and adequacy. This “meta-ontological” approach has guided us in presenting herein, a framework for generating robust geographic ontologies, which will comply with the semantics of the concepts of the specific domain.

Ontology Evolution: Not the Same as Schema Evolution

As ontology development becomes a more ubiquitous and collaborative process, ontology versioning and evolution becomes an important area of ontology research. The many similarities between database-schema evolution and ontology evolution will allow us to build on the extensive research in schema evolution. However, there are also important differences between database schemas and ontologies. The differences stem from different usage paradigms, the presence of explicit semantics and different knowledge models. A lot of problems that existed only in theory in database research come to the forefront as practical problems in ontology evolution. These differences have important implications for the development of ontology-evolution frameworks: The traditional distinction between versioning and evolution is not applicable to ontologies. There are several dimensions along which compatibility between versions must be considered. The set of change operations for ontologies is different. We must develop automatic techniques for finding similarities and differences between versions.