Walter Moreira – 24 mar. 2011
Enquanto realizava a costumeira limpeza no computador ou, para usar uma linguagem mais elaborada, enquanto adotava uma política de desbastamento da minha coleção particular de recursos digitais, rs, encontrei algo que, imaginei, poderia interessar a outros estudiosos do tema das ontologias e da terminologia, compreendidas stricto sensu no domínio da ciência da informação. Passo, então, a compartilhá-lo.
Trata-se de um levantamento sobre artigos de periódicos da grande área da ciência da informação que abordassem, com algum grau de aprofundamento, as questões relacionadas às ontologias e à terminologia, consideradas individualmente, ou, em caso mais raro e que mais me interessava na ocasião, que as relacionassem entre si. A pesquisa bibliográfica tinha como objetivo colher elementos para minha pesquisa de doutoramento e foi realizada por meio da LISA, incluindo periódicos em variados idiomas que estivessem compreendidos no período que vai de 2004 a 2008. Claro está, portanto, que o levantamento desatualizou-se, mas espero que ainda seja útil a algum interessado e, por que não, que alguém possa atualizá-lo.
Cada item apresenta elementos para a referência completa, embora não estejam normatizados, e inclui resumo e palavras-chave.
NACIONAIS
Histórias de aprendizagem e gestão organizacional: uma abordagem ontológica e hermenêutica
Gentil José Lucena Filho, Margarita Maria Morales Villegas, Sheila da Costa Oliveira
Neste trabalho, partimos de uma história de aprendizagem (HA) já escrita no formato original (segundo desenho originalmente formulado no Centro de Aprendizagem Organizacional do MIT) a qual foi objeto de uma dissertação no Mestrado em Gestão de Conhecimento e Tecnologia da Informação da Universidade Católica de Brasília. Analisamo-la com o objetivo de evidenciar se a mesma tem impacto na aprendizagem organizacional e se constitui instrumento para a gestão organizacional. Para a análise, utilizamos duas abordagens – a Ontologia da Linguagem de Flores / Echeverría, em uma acepção filosófica do termo “ontologia” (diferente da acepção usual comumente utilizada nas ciências de computação e informação), e a Teoria da Interpretação de Ricoeur – como meio de verificação de evidência de aprendizagem, tanto em nível de primeira ordem, quanto em nível de segunda ordem. Especificamente, os fenômenos observados são declarações de aprendizagem, tipologias conversacionais e fluxos emocionais presentes na narrativa que constitui a HA.
Palavras-chave
História de aprendizagem. Gestão organizacional. Ontologia da linguagem. Teoria da interpretação. Aprendizagem. Conversações.
Ontologias e vocabulários controlados: comparação de metodologias para construção
Daniela Lucas da Silva, Renato Rocha Souza, Maurício Barcellos Almeida
O artigo se propõe a apresentar um estudo analítico sobre metodologias e métodos para construção de ontologias e vocabulários controlados mediante análise da literatura sobre metodologias para construção de ontologias e de normas internacionais para construção de software e de vocabulários controlados. Por meio de pesquisa teórica e empírica, foi possível construir um panorama comparativo que pode servir de apoio na definição de padrões metodológicos para construção de ontologias através da integração de princípios teóricos e metodológicos da ciência da informação da ciência da computação, bem como de contribuições de metodologias e métodos conhecidos para construção de ontologias.
Palavras-chave
Ontologias. Vocabulários controlados. Construção de ontologias. Construção de vocabulários controlados. Tesauros.
O nível do conhecimento e os instrumentos de representação: tesauros e ontologias
Alexandra Moreira, Lídia Alvarenga e Alcione de Paiva Oliveira
No contexto atual, existe uma grande demanda para desenvolvimento de sistemas que trabalhem com recuperação e troca de informação ou conhecimento. Para servir de suporte a esses sistemas, novos instrumentos para a organização de conhecimento surgem a cada dia, sendo que, recentemente, muitos deles têm sido denominado “ontologias”. Alguns pesquisadores consideram os tesauros como ontologias simples, uma vez que uma ontologia complexa exige uma riqueza maior de relações do que as tradicionalmente apresentadas em um tesauros. Seriam tesauros e ontologias termos que denotam o mesmo instrumento ou denotariam objetos diferentes e, portanto, seu uso indistinto seria inadequado? No segundo caso, estaria estabelecido um equívoco terminológico e as conseqüências dessa confusão seriam a falta de entendimento sobre o que caracteriza cada uma das ferramentas. Este trabalho compreende de uma discussão da literatura sobre tesauros e ontologias, com o objetivo de contribuir com o esclarecimento terminológico e com o entendimento desses dois conceitos.
Palavras-chave: Sistemas de Conceitos; Ontologia; Tesauros; Epistemologia; Representação do Conhecimento.
Terminologia e documentação: a relação solidária das organizações do conhecimento e da informação no domínio da inovação tecnológica
Maria de Fátima G. M. Tálamo e Lívia Aparecida Ferreira Lenzi
Breve retrospectiva acerca da função da linguagem de especialidade e da ordem da informação para a produção do conhecimento. Apresenta-se a terminologia da linguagem de especialidade como elemento nuclear não só para o entendimento do domínio – seja técnico, tecnológico ou científico – mas também para a comunicação e produção do conhecimento. Enuncia-se proposta de estrutura terminológica do domínio da “inovação tecnológica” comparando-a com duas diferentes ordens de informação – dois tesauros – para demonstrar que organização do conhecimento e organização da informação são processos solidários, cuja dissociação provoca o comprometimento da formação e do desenvolvimento da pesquisa.
Palavras-chave: Linguagem de especialidade; Terminologia; Documentação, informação, conhecimento, inovação tecnológica; Organização da informação; Organização do conhecimento.
Novas relações entre Terminologia e Ciência da Informação na perspectiva de um conceito contemporâneo da informação
Marilda Lopes Ginez de Lara
Discute-se as novas relações entre a Terminologia e a Ciência da Informação a partir de uma proposta de conceito contemporâneo de informação cujas bases são a negociação do sentido e a legitimação social dos conceitos. Considera-se que embora a teoria terminológica clássica tenha contribuído para o aprimoramento das metodologias de construção de linguagens documentárias, ela não permite responder adequadamente às necessidades ditadas pelo novo conceito de informação. Verificam-se as características do conceito de informação nos dias de hoje frente às alterações no modo de conceber a ciência, os traços da Terminologia clássica e a possibilidade do uso dos referenciais da Terminologia contemporânea na organização da informação para o acesso e uso.
Palavras-chave: Ciência da Informação; Terminologia; Organização da informação; Lingüística Documentária.
Base de Dados como Elemento Facilitador para o Tratamento dos Dados Terminológicos
Adriana Gonçalves Xavier, Ananda Feix Ribeiro, Laís Rosa dos Santos, Rafael Port da Rocha, Regina Helena van der Laan
Relato da elaboração e da implementação de uma base de dados desenvolvida como ferramenta auxiliar para o tratamento dos dados coletados para a pesquisa – Avaliação dos Descritores Relativos a Ciências da Informação, Empregados no Processo de Indexação Alfabética pela Biblioteca Setorial da Faculdade de Biblioteconomia e Comunicação/UFRGS. Essa avaliação está sendo desenvolvida baseada na Teoria Comunicativa da Terminologia. Nessa teoria o termo é analisado na perspectiva de uma unidade lexical terminológica, sendo necessário sua identificação em situação discursiva, ou seja, em funcionamento. A base de dados visa agilizar e facilitar o trabalho na consolidação dos termos e a elaboração de definições para a construção de um glossário. Este será construído com a finalidade de tornar-se critério avaliador dos descritores relativos à Área de Ciências da Informação. A base de dados foi desenvolvida segundo o modelo relacional que possibilita estabelecer com maior precisão as relações entre os campos constituintes da ficha de coleta dos dados terminológicos empregada na pesquisa. A base está estruturada nas seguintes entidades: compilador, fonte, termo, definição, contexto, marcas semânticas e definição para a elaboração do glossário. Destaca-se que essa ferramenta poderá ser empregada em outras pesquisas de cunho terminológico e para construção de tesauros.
Avaliação de Descritores Relativos às Ciências da Informação: relato de pesquisa
Regina Helena van der Laan, Glória Isabel Sattamini Ferreira, Martha E. K. Kling Bonotto, Iara Conceição Bitencourt Neves, Inês M. de Gasperin
Relato de pesquisa que apresenta a proposta do uso da Teoria Comunicativa da Terminologia na metodologia do controle do vocabulário de indexação. A avaliação qualitativa deste vocabulário teve como base a seleção de descritores em uma lista constituída de 2.129 descritores. O corpus da coleta de descritores constituiu-se de artigos de periódicos brasileiros em Ciência da Informação, publicados a partir de 1995, sob a responsabilidade de programas de Pósgraduação. Evidenciou-se nos resultados o uso de descritores com diferenças de sentido entre as unidades de indexação, a falta de uma rede de remissivas e a necessidade de emprego de qualificadores para especificar a área do assunto do termo.
Uma iniciativa interinstitucional para a construção de ontologia sobre ciência da informação: visão geral do projeto P.O.I.S
Maurício Barcellos Almeida, Maria Aparecida Moura, Ana Maria Pereira Cardoso, Beatriz Valadares Cendón
A utilização de uma terminologia consistente é um importante passo para a consolidação e desenvolvimento de um campo científico. Além disso, uma área de pesquisa em evolução como a Ciência da Informação, pode se beneficiar de uma conceitualização consensualmente aceita pela comunidade científica. Na tentativa de colaborar nesse processo de consolidação, e, além disso, buscando preencher lacuna representada pela ausência de vocabulários para a área no Brasil, pesquisadores e alunos de duas instituições de ensino e pesquisa em Ciência da Informação de Minas Gerais, a Escola de Ciência da Informação da UFMG e o Instituto de Informática da PUC Minas, desenvolvem o projeto POIS (Portuguese Ontology in Information Science). O objetivo do presente artigo é proporcionar uma visão geral sobre o projeto e posicionar a comunidade acadêmica quanto à sua execução, além de apresentar informações sobre os recursos utilizados, sobre as experiências em sua execução e sobre a pesquisa referente a ontologias efetuada em seu escopo.
Uso de ontologias para a extração de informações em atos jurídicos em uma instituição pública
Eduardo Jaime Quirós Batres, Alcione de Paiva Oliveira, Bruno Ventorim Gabrielli, Vinci Pegoretti Amorim, Alexandra Moreira
Com a expansão da Internet e a disponibilidade das informações em geral, surge um crescente anseio por parte de cidadãos e organizações de terem à sua disposição não só informações que dizem respeito a terceiros, mas também as informações a seu respeito ou que diretamente os afetem. Dentro deste contexto incluem-se as normas em geral e mais especificamente os atos emanados do serviço público. Este trabalho apresenta uma ferramenta automatizada, utilizando técnicas de extração automática de informações, com o intuito de extrair as principais informações contidas nos atos administrativos da Universidade Federal de Viçosa (UFV), visando a facilitar a utilização ampla dessas informações que, por serem de natureza pública, expandem seu interesse além das fronteiras do órgão emissor. Para isto se fez necessária a extração e estruturação das informações contidas nos mais diversos documentos eletrônicos dispersos pelos órgãos emissores. A ferramenta faz uso de uma ontologia construída especificamente para este propósito, possibilitando a geração de uma base de conhecimento cujo conteúdo reflete os campos obrigatórios e necessários para caracterizar um ato administrativo.
Princípios de organização e representação de conceitos em linguagens documentárias
Edmeire Cristina Pereira, Leilah Santiago Bufrem
Análise dos princípios e métodos de organização e representação de conceitos para as Linguagens Documentárias (LD), enfocando-se principalmente a Teoria da Classificação Facetada (Ranganathan), a Teoria Geral da Terminologia (Wüester) e a Teoria do Conceito (Dahlberg), considerada sua importância para o avanço dos estudos em Análise Documentária (AD). Propõe uma síntese de princípios/características para a AD. Conclui que a AD comporta em si dois sentidos: o de método interpretativo e o de teoria, cujo conhecimento é produzido a partir do método.
Tecnologia da informação e serviços de referência eletrônicos: uma proposta de aplicação baseada em chatterbots e ontologias
Guilherme Ataíde Dias, Gustavo Henn, José Wendell de Morais Silva
Discute os principais conceitos relacionados ao desenvolvimento de um sistema de referência eletrônico em unidades de informação através do uso da tecnologia de informação. Introduz o conceito de chatterbots, apresenta seus principais usos, gerações evolutivas e linguagens utilizadas na sua implementação. Conceitua ontologia de maneira geral e contextualiza seu significado na área da Ciência da Informação. Descreve a arquitetura do sistema DELPHOS, explicitando as etapas da construção da interface do usuário, processador AIML e bases de conhecimentos. Conclui sugerindo estudos futuros com o objetivo de avaliar as dinâmicas emergentes da interação dos usuários com o chatterbot e a possibilidade de construção de um perfil de usuário a partir das interações com o mesmo.
Ontologia: o termo e a idéia
José Marcelo Schiessl
Aborda o conceito de Ontologia e relaciona alguns problemas que motivam os pesquisadores desta área. Contextualiza a sobrecarga informacional em virtude do crescente volume de texto eletrônico armazenado em bases de dados, em especial na Web, e sua implicação na manutenção do fluxo da informação. Além disso, introduz a idéia da Web Semântica como uma solução para a organização dos conteúdos das páginas nos sítios da Web e o papel preponderante das ontologias, dentro deste contexto, que auxiliam a automatização da interpretação destes conteúdos e otimiza a recuperação da informação.
Web semântica no ensino à distância
Andrenizia Aquino Eluan, Gleisy Regina Bóries Fachin, Fernando Alvaro Ostuni Gauthier, José Leomar Tedesco
Com a evolução da tecnologia de informação e comunicação, a Web vem agregando diversidade de recursos que podem facilitar o desenvolvimento de várias áreas do conhecimento, pois promove o acesso e o uso da informação de forma globalizada, acessível e sem fronteiras. Neste artigo, será abordado a Web semântica como um meio de compartilhar informações ao adotar padrões de interoperabilidade para a comunicação em rede. Entre as preocupações que circundam o espaço educacional, estão às estratégias de busca e recuperação de informação de forma relevante e eficiente para o aprendizado e construção do conhecimento. Neste contexto, encontra-se a Educação a Distância, área que poderá desfrutar dos recursos da Web Semântica e de algumas vantagens da utilização de ontologias, as quais serão apresentadas neste artigo.
A terminologia indígena na fala do amazônida / La terminología indígena en la habla del amazonida
Maria Odaisa Espinheiro de Oliveira
A Representação Simbólica das Narrativas Populares da Amazônia Paraense como Linguagem de Informação (RESNAPAP), é um projeto de pesquisa da Faculdade de Biblioteconomia da Universidade Federal do Pará, no Brasil, que vem estudando a terminologia através de narrativas orais. O objetivo do trabalho é conhecer a terminologia indígena de termos retirados de narrativas orais. Para alcançar esse objetivo, foram recolhidas, pelo projeto “O Imaginário nas Formas Narrativas Orais da Amazônia Paraense (IFNOPAP)”, 102 narrativas em dois municípios da Amazônia Paraense localizados as margens de dois importantes rios de concentração indígena: um no município de Cametá, próximo ao rio Tocantins, e o outro no município de Altamira, próximo ao rio Xingu. Esse artigo apresenta os termos, que o projeto RESNAPAP denomina de culturais, vistos como unidades lexicais da linguagem natural representativa da realidade sociocultural do amazônida. Assim, os termos de origem indígena foram organizados para se observar a contribuição lexical do étimo indígena no português falado da Amazônia e, também, para ser representado pelas tradições históricas e socioculturais.
Informação & Sociedade: estudos
ESTUDO SOBRE A TERMINOLOGIA DA LITERATURA INFANTIL E JUVENIL: uma possibilidade para o controle de vocabulário
Glória Isabel Sattamini Ferreira, Martha E. K. Kling Bonotto, Regina Helena van der Laan, Sônia Elisa Caregnato
Relato de um estudo sobre a terminologia da Literatura Infantil e Juvenil, tendo como corpus textual as obras do acervo do Centro Referencial de Literatura Infantil e Juvenil (CERLIJ) da FABICO/UFRGS. Parte da necessidade do estabelecimento do controle do vocabulário utilizado para efetuar a indexação do acervo deste centro. Tem como embasamento teórico a Teoria Comunicativa da Terminologia – TCT. Apresenta o percurso metodológico desde a coleta dos termos até a reunião da terminologia coletada em um glossário e sua representação sob a forma de um mapa conceitual. Estes gráficos facilitam a visualização das categorias e das relações da estrutura do tesauro, que se encontra em fase de pré-teste.
Perspectivas em Ciência da Informação
Web Semântica: ontologias como ferramentas de representação do conhecimento
Maria Elisa Valentim
A Web Semântica é uma extensão da Web que acrescenta semântica ao atual formato de representação de dados. Para isso foram propostas diversas tecnologias, dentre essas a criação de ontologias,visando atribuir sentido e significado ao conteúdo dos documentos, atuando como ferramenta de representaçãdo conhecimento. Na presente pesquisa, procurou-se verificar se as ontologias seriam utilizadas apenas para representar o assunto de uma página Web através de termos contextualizados ou se tentariam controlar o vocabulário da Web como um Tesauro
Ontologias de domínio: um estudo das relações conceituais
Luana Farias Sales, Maria Luiza de Almeida Campos, Hagar Espanha Gomes
No âmbito da elaboração de Ontologias, uma problemática que tem se colocado é a ausência de um padrão teórico-metodológico. Propõe-se então uma sistematização das relações apresentadas nas literaturas da Ciência da Informação, da Terminologia, da Ciência da Computação. A sistematização realizada busca unir as duplas de categorias (relações categoriais) com as relações potenciais entre elas (relações formais). A partir da seleção de um corpus da Gene Ontology, foi feita uma análise das definições a fim de identificar as relações já mencionadas na literatura ou descobrir a existência de novas relações. Conclui-se que relações diferentes podem surgir em diferentes domínios e que definições sistematizadas são indispensáveis para o estabelecimento seguro de relações formais.
Ontologias como novas bases de conhecimento científico
Carlos Henrique Marcondes, Marília Alvarenga Rocha Mendonça, Luciana Reis Malheiros, Leonardo Cruz da Costa, Tatiana Cristina Paredes dos Santos
Periódicos científicos publicadosna Web são ainda calcados no modelo impresso. O conhecimento aí contido está em forma textual, não processável por programas. É proposto um modelo de ambiente de publicação na Web que permita a autores publicar seu artigo simultaneamente em formato textual e em formato “inteligível” por programas. Como domínio para avaliação e aperfeiçoamento do modelo, foram analisados 60 artigos de periódicos eletrônicos em Ciências da Saúde. O modelo e os resultados da análise são expostos e discutidos.
Revista Digital de Biblioteconomia e Ciência da Informação
A ontologia na ciência da informação
Marta Sianes Oliveira do Nascimento; Geovane Eugênio Oliveira; Fernanda Passini Moreno; Geraldino Gonçalves Bastos
Este artigo apresenta o uso do termo ontologia, a partir de levantamento da freqüência deste em artigos de periódicos indexados na Base LISA. Procurou-se identificar a evolução do volume de publicações em diversos idiomas, desde a primeira vez em que o termo foi utilizado, em 1977, até março de 2006; a relação do termo com outros temas e a identificação dos pesquisadores com maior contribuição acadêmica na área. Os dados encontrados sugerem que deve ser realizado um estudo qualitativo, como a análise de conteúdo dos resumos ou textos completos para estabelecer uma análise mais aprofundada do escopo em que a ontologia se vê inserida hoje no campo da Ciência da Informação. Abstract This paper presents ontology term using thorough of frequency reseraching of it, at articles of indexed journals at LISA database. The objective was identify publications quantity increasing at various languages, since the first time where the term was used, at 1977, until March 2006 and the researchers identification with great academic contribution at this area. The founded data suggest that it must be developed a qualitative study, like the complete analysis of content of the abstracts or texts to establish a scope deeper analysis where Ontology is inserted today at Information Science area.
Suportes teóricos para pensar linguagens documentárias
Rodrigo de Sales
Este artigo consiste em uma breve revisão na literatura referente aos estudos e pesquisas que vêm sendo realizados no Brasil predominantemente nos últimos cinco anos a respeito da construção de modelos de representação do conhecimento, mais popularmente conhecidos como linguagens documentárias. O propósito é identificar quais as principais teorias vêm fornecendo subsídios para as respectivas pesquisas. Antes de mapear parte do campo epistemológico das linguagens documentárias, será explicitada uma breve contextualização histórica e conceitual a respeito das linguagens documentárias. Almeja-se concluir com a identificação de possíveis linhas ou tendências de pesquisa acerca da construção de modelos de representação do conhecimento.
Linguagem documentária e terminologia
Marilda Lopes Ginez de LARA
A linguagem documentária deve ser formulada rigorosamente para se constituir em sistema de organização e de comunicação da informação, qualquer que seja seu universo (bases bibliográficas, sites na WEB, conteúdos de manuais técnicos). O uso da terminologia teórica e da terminologia concreta contribui à consecução desses objetivos, à medida que fornece princípios para a identificação dos domínios, delimitação de conceitos e termos, estabelecimento de relações entre conceitos apoiadas em definições, além de prover referência concreta aos descritores. Visando melhor compreensão dos conceitos terminológicos, exploramos as normas terminológicas ISO 704:2000 e ISSO 1087-1:2000, no que tange aos conceitos e à modelagem de sistemas de conceitos, destacando que a importância da Terminologia (teórica e metodológica) para a construção da linguagem documentária, transcende o uso normalizado dos termos: a apropriação de procedimentos e de conceitos terminológicos pela Ciência da Informação (e pela Lingüística Documentária) se relaciona à especificidade de seu objeto e objetivos. A utilização da terminologia, ao lado de contribuições de outras áreas, vai ao encalço da constituição de unidades de informação.
Palavras-chave: linguagem documentária, organização da informação, terminologia, normas terminológicas, lingüística.
Terminologia como indicador qualitativo
Alice Ferry de MORAES
A terminologia empregada pelos pesquisadores para identificação dos temas de seus Grupos de Pesquisa, registrados junto ao Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, foi também empregada como um instrumento na reordenação das Linhas de Pesquisa da Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, assim como indicador qualitativo para a avaliação da produção científica institucional. Esses dois processos foram desenvolvidos pelo Departamento de Estudos em Ciência e Tecnologia do Centro de Informação Científica e Tecnológica, em parceria com representantes de outras Unidades da Instituição. Uma análise comparativa apontou as divergências existentes entre a terminologia empregada pelos pesquisadores, a Tabela de Áreas do Conhecimento do Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, os Descritores em Ciências da Saúde desenvolvidos pelo Centro Latino Americano e do Caribe de Informações em Ciências da Saúde e o Tesauro de Manguinhos. Os resultados desta análise levaram a uma conclusão sobre a validade do uso da análise terminológica como um dos instrumentos para a reordenação dos Grupos de Pesquisa dentro das linhas de pesquisa da Fundação Osvaldo Cruz, assim como do seu uso como instrumento de avaliação da produção científica, já que ambos estes processos visam proporcionar maior integração científica institucional, de maneira estratégica e econômica.
Palavras-chave: avaliação científica; produção científica; terminologia; indicador qualitativo.
A informação documentária: codificação e decodificação
Vânia Mara Alves LIMA
Procuramos demonstrar como a classificação do conhecimento científico, ao longo dos séculos, tem se refletido na organização deste conhecimento e na elaboração da informação documentária nas instituições responsáveis pela sua preservação e disseminação. Sustentamos a suposição demonstrando o seu valor explicativo, por meio da análise da tensão dialética que se estabelece entre os sistemas de classificação e os sistemas de recuperação, tensão essa que determina o processo semiótico denominado representação documentária, e possibilita as enunciações de codificação e de decodificação da informação documentária. Concluímos, recomendando que o desenvolvimento e gerenciamento de linguagens documentárias levem em conta a dinâmica da enunciação de codificação e da enunciação de decodificação da informação documentária.
Palavras-chave: informação documentária; terminologia; linguagem documentária.
A linguagem de especialidade e o texto técnico-científico: notas conceituais
Maria Cristiane Barbosa GALVÃO
Pretende-se explicitar, neste artigo, algumas características do texto técnicocientífico e da linguagem empregada na sua construção: a linguagem de especialidade. Pretende-se, com estas reflexões, contribuir para a melhor compreensão desta linguagem e desta tipologia textual.
Palavras-chave: linguagem de especialidade, terminologia, texto técnico-científico, conceitos.
2004, v. 17, n. 4
Endurants and perdurants in directly depicting ontologies
Bittner, Thomas; Donnelly, Maureen; Smith, Barry
Artificial intelligence; Ontologies
We propose an ontological theory that is powerful enough to describe both complex spatio-temporal processes and the enduring entities that participate therein. For this purpose we introduce the notion of a directly depicting ontology. Directly depicting ontologies are based on relatively simple languages and fall into two major categories: ontologies of type SPAN and ontologies of type SNAP. These represent two complementary perspectives on reality and employ distinct though compatible systems of categories. A SNAP (snapshot) ontology comprehends enduring entities such as organisms, geographic features, or qualities as they exist at some given moment of time. A SPAN ontology comprehends perduring entities such as processes and their parts and aggregates as they unfold themselves through some temporal interval. We give an axiomatic account of the theory of directly depicting ontologies and of the core parts of the meta-ontological fragment within which they are embedded. (Original abstract)
Space and time in eco-ontologies
Fonseca, Frederico; Martin, James
Artificial intelligence; Ontologies; Space; Time; Epistemology
In this paper, we elaborate on the fundamental characteristics of ecological ontologies, and draw attention to the importance of space and time in the structure of these ontologies. First, we argue that a key to the specification of eco-ontologies is the notion of teleological organization grounded in a notion of recursion. Second, we introduce the notion of roles to characterize the generalized and interactive teleological aspects of ecological systems. Third, we also introduce a preliminary set of temporal and spatial concepts intended to represent ecological space and time in the formalization of eco-ontologies. Fourth, we show how some important epistemological constraints on cognition are fundamentally ecological in nature. This work is informed by Kant’s investigations into the foundations of biology, by the hermeneutic investigations of Heidegger and Gadamer, and by mathematical investigations into recursive logic and their application to biology by Spencer-Brown, Maturana, Varela, and Kauffman. (Original abstract)
2005, v. 18, n. 3
COSMOA: an ontology-centric multi-agent system for coordinating medical responses to large-scale disasters
Bloodsworth, Peter; Greenwood, Sue
Computer applications; Health care; Disaster management; Agent technology; Ontologies
Planning for large-scale disasters is becoming increasingly important especially with terrorism on the rise. Preparations are particularly necessary in the planning and provision of emergency medical services. Whilst emergency service training exercises have improved the situation current emergency plans can be rigid and may not take into account the operational conditions at the time. Gathering information from distributed sources, integrating it and then making decisions are required in order to make plans more dynamic. Such complexity makes it impossible for any single human or even a team to fulfil the roles adequately. In this paper we discuss how multi-agent systems can be employed to help address this problem. We describe COSMOA an ontology-centric multi-agent system for supporting hospitals during the response to a large-scale disaster by producing a web-based emergency plan. A prototype of COSMOA has been implemented and we discuss some of the preliminary results. (Original abstract)
2006, v. 19, n. 1
Automatic ontology generation from Web tabular structures.
Pivk, Aleksander
Online information retrieval; Ontologies; Tabular structures; Knowledge management; Semantic web
Turning the current Web into a Semantic Web requires automatic approaches for document annotation, since manual approaches will not scale in general. The focus of the thesis is on automatic transformation of arbitrary table-like structures into knowledge models, i.e., ontologies. The presented work is based on Hurst’s table model and consists of a methodology, an accompanying implementation named TARTAR, and a thorough evaluation. The evaluation showed over 80% success rate of automatic transformation of tables into semantic representations and 100% accuracy in the task of query answering over the table contents. (Author abstract)
2004, v. 25, n. 3
Building agents to serve customers
Barbuceanu, Mihai; Fox, Mark S; Hong, Lei; Lallement, Yannick; Zhang, Zhongdong
Artificial intelligence; Agent programs; Natural language processing; Tasks; Ontologies
AI agents combining natural language interaction, task planning, and business ontologies can help companies provide better-quality and more cost-effective customer service. Our customer-service agents use natural language to interact with customers, enabling customers to state their intentions directly instead of searching for the places on the Web site that may address their concern. We use planning methods to search systematically for the solution to the customer’s problem, ensuring that a resolution satisfactory for both the customer and the company is found, if one exists. Our agents converse with customers, guaranteeing that needed information is acquired from customers and that relevant information is provided to them in order for both parties to make the right decision. The net effect is a more frictionless interaction process that improves the customer experience and makes businesses more competitive on the service front. (Original abstract)
2005, v. 26, n. 1
Semantic integration
Doan, Anhai; Halevy, Alon Y; Noy, Natalya F
Information technology; Semantic relations; Integration; Data exchange; Duplicates; Databases; Ontologies
Sharing data across disparate sources requires solving many problems of semantic integration, such as matching ontologies or schemas, detecting duplicate tuples, reconciling inconsistent data values, modeling complex relations between concepts in different sources, and reasoning with semantic mappings. This issue of AI Magazine includes papers that discuss various methods on establishing mappings between ontology elements or data fragments. The collection includes papers that discuss semantic-integration issues in such contexts as data integration and web services. The issue also includes a brief survey of semantic-integration research in the database community. (Original abstract)
Semantic integration through invariants
Gruninger, Michael; Kopena, Joseph B
Information technology; Semantic relations; Integration; Data exchange; Software; Ontologies
A semantics-preserving exchange of information between two software applications requires mappings between logically equivalent concepts in the ontology of each application. The challenge of semantic integration is therefore equivalent to the problem of generating such mappings, determining that they are correct, and providing a vehicle for executing the mappings, thus translating terms from one ontology into another. This article presents an approach toward this goal using techniques that exploit the model-theoretic structures underlying ontologies. With these as inputs, semi-automated and automated components may be used to create mappings between ontologies and perform translations. (Original abstract)
Automatic ontology matching using application semantics
Eyal, Ami; Gal, Avigdor; Jamil, Hasan; Modica, Giovanni
Information technology; Semantic relations; Matching; Algorithms; Syntactic analysis; Web sites; Ontologies
We propose the use of application semantics to enhance the process of semantic reconciliation. Application semantics involves those elements of business reasoning that affect the way concepts are presented to users: their layout, and so on. In particular, we pursue in this article the notion of precedence, in which temporal constraints determine the order in which concepts are presented to the user. Existing matching algorithms use either syntactic means (such as term matching and domain matching) or model semantic means, the use of structural information that is provided by the specific data model to enhance the matching process. The novelty of our approach lies in proposing a class of matching techniques that takes advantage of ontological structures and application semantics. As an example, the use of precedence to reflect business rules has not been applied elsewhere, to the best of our knowledge. We have tested the process for a variety of web sites in domains such as car rentals and airline reservations, and we share our experiences with precedence and its limitations. (Original abstract)
Data integration: a logic-based perspective
Calvanese, Diego; De Giacomo, Giuseppe
Information technology; Semantic relations; Integration; Data exchange; Matching; Ontologies
Data integration is the problem of combining data residing at different autonomous, heterogeneous sources and providing the client with a unified, reconciled global view of the data. We discuss data-integration systems, taking the abstract viewpoint that the global view is an ontology expressed in a class-based formalism. We resort to an expressive description logic, ALCQI, that fully captures class-based representation formalisms, and we show that query answering in data integration, as well as all other relevant reasoning tasks, is decidable. However, when we have to deal with large a-mounts of data, the high computational complexity in the size of the data makes the use of a full-fledged expressive description logic infeasible in practice. This leads us to consider DL-Lite, a specifically tailored restriction of ALCQI that ensures tractability of query answering in data integration while keeping enough expressive power to capture the most relevant features of class-based formalisms. (Original abstract)
Ontology translation for interoperability among semantic Web services
Burstein, Mark H; McDermott, Drew V
Information technology; Semantic relations; Interoperability; World Wide Web; Ontologies; Semantic web
Research on semantic web services promises greater interoperability among software agents and web services by enabling content-based automated service discovery and interaction and by utilizing. Although this is to be based on use of shared ontologies published on the semantic web, services produced and described by different developers may well use different, perhaps partly overlapping, sets of ontologies. Interoperability will depend on ontology mappings and architectures supporting the associated translation processes. The question we ask is, does the traditional approach of introducing mediator agents to translate messages between requestors and services work in such an open environment? This article reviews some of the processing assumptions that were made in the development of the semantic web service modeling ontology OWL-S and argues that, as a practical matter, the translation function cannot always be isolated in mediators. Ontology mappings need to be published on the semantic web just as ontologies themselves are. The translation for service discovery, service process model interpretation, task negotiation, service invocation, and response interpretation may then be distributed to various places in the architecture so that translation can be done in the specific goal-oriented informational contexts of the agents performing these processes. We present arguments for assigning translation responsibility to particular agents in the cases of service invocation, response translation, and matchmaking. (Original abstract)
2005, v. 26, n. 3
The general motors variation-reduction adviser: deployment issues for an AI application
Morgan, Alexander P; Cafeo, John A; Godden, Kurt; Lesperance, Ronald M; Simon, Andrea M; McGuinness, Deborah L; Benedict, James L
Knowledge based systems; Case based reasoning; Computerized production; Motor industry; Artificial intelligence; General Motors; Ontology
The General Motors Variation-Reduction Adviser is a knowledge system built on case-based reasoning principles that is currently in use in eighteen General Motors assembly centers. This article reviews the overall characteristics of the system and then focuses on various AI elements critical to support its deployment to a production system. A key AI enabler is ontology-guided search using domain-specific ontologies. (Original abstract)
2004, v. 7
Tools of Knowledge Representation: Thesauri Versus Ontologies
Jimenez, Antonio Garcia
Knowledge representation; Ontologies; Thesauri
The ontologies as valid tools of knowledge representation are analysed, by means of the presentation of different aspects that conform this emergent reality. Below, one of the most relevant goals in this paper is to connect ontologies with thesaurus, in order to determine their features in common, their differences and the possibilities of conversion. Finally, from viewpoint of Library and Information Science, the future implications because of generalization of the ontologies are presented. Adapted from the source document.
2006, v. 24, n. 3
Ontology oriented programming in Go!
Clark, K. L.; McCabe, F. G.
Software; Programming languages; Ontologies; Go
In this paper we introduce the knowledge representation features of a new multi-paradigm programming language called Go! that cleanly integrates logic, functional, object oriented and imperative programming styles. Borrowing from L&O [1], Go! allows knowledge to be represented as a set of labeled theories incrementally constructed using multiple-inheritance. The theory label is a constructor for instances of the class. The instances are Go! ‘s objects. A Go! theory structure can be used to characterize any knowledge domain. In particular, it can be used to describe classes of things, such as people, students, etc., their subclass relationships and characteristics of their key properties. That is, it can be used to represent an ontology. For each ontology class we give a type definition – we declare what properties, with what value type, instances of the class have – and we give a labeled theory that defines these properties. Subclass relationships are reflected using both type and theory inheritance rules. Following [2], we shall call this ontology oriented programming. This paper describes the Go! language and its use for ontology oriented programming, comparing its expressiveness with Owl, particularly Owl Lite [3]. The paper assumes some familiarity with ontology specification using Owl like languages and with logic and object oriented programming. (Author abstract)
2005, v. 165, n. 2
Decision making on the sole basis of statistical likelihood
Giang, Phan H; Shenoy, Prakash P
Computer applications; Expert systems; Decision making; Decision support systems; Knowledge representation; Artificial intelligence; Ontologies
This paper presents a new axiomatic decision theory for choice under uncertainty. Unlike Bayesian decision theory where uncertainty is represented by a probability function, in our theory, uncertainty is given in the form of a likelihood function extracted from statistical evidence. The likelihood principle in statistics stipulates that likelihood functions encode all relevant information obtainable from experimental data. In particular, we do not assume any knowledge of prior probabilities. Consequently, a Bayesian conversion of likelihoods to posterior probabilities is not possible in our setting. We make an assumption that defines the likelihood of a set of hypotheses as the maximum likelihood over the elements of the set. We justify an axiomatic system similar to that used by von Neumann and Morgenstern for choice under risk. Our main result is a representation theorem using the new concept of binary utility. We also discuss how ambiguity attitudes are handled. Applied to the statistical inference problem, our theory suggests a novel solution. The results in this paper could be useful for probabilistic model selection. (Original abstract)
Artificial Intelligence and Law
2004, v. 12, n. 4
Legal ontologies in knowledge engineering and information management.
Breuker, Joost; Valente, Andre; Winkels, Radboud
Computer applications; Law; Expert systems; Knowledge representation; Ontologies
In this article we describe two core ontologies of law that specify knowledge that is common to all domains of law. The first one, FOLaw describes and explains dependencies between types of knowledge in legal reasoning; the second one, LRI-Core ontology, captures the main concepts in legal information processing. Although FOLaw has shown to be of high practical value in various applied European ICT projects, its reuse is rather limited as it is rather concerned with the structure of legal reasoning than with legal knowledge itself: as many other “legal core ontologies”, FOLaw is therefore rather an epistemological framework than an ontology. Therefore, we also developed LRI-Core. As we argue here that legal knowledge is based to a large extend on common-sense knowledge, LRI-Core is particularly inspired by research on abstract common-sense concepts. The main categories of LRI-Core are: physical, mental and abstract concepts. Roles cover in particular social worlds. Another special category are occurrences; terms that denote events and situations. We illustrate the use of LRI-Core with an ontology for Dutch criminal law, developed in the e-Court European project. (Author abstract)
Causation in AI and law.
Lehmann, Jos; Breuker, Joost; Brouwer, Bob
Computer applications; Law; Expert systems; Knowledge representation; Ontologies
Reasoning about causation in fact is an essential element of attributing legal responsibility. Therefore, the automation of the attribution of legal responsibility requires a modelling effort aimed at the following: a thorough understanding of the relation between the legal concepts of responsibility and of causation in fact; a thorough understanding of the relation between causation in fact and the common sense concept of causation; and, finally, the specification of an ontology of the concepts that are minimally required for (automatic) common sense reasoning about causation. This article offers a worked-out example of the indicated analysis. Such example consists of: a definition of the legal concept of responsibility (in terms of liability and accountability); a definition of the legal concept of causation in fact (in terms of the initiation of physical processes by an agent and of the provision of reasons and/or opportunities to other agents); CausatiOnt, an AI-like ontology of the common sense (causal) concepts that are minimally needed for reasoning about the legal concept of causation in fact (in particular, the concepts of category, dimension, object, agent, process, event and act). (Author abstract)
On the ontological status of plans and norms.
Boella, Guido; Lesmo, Leonardo; Damiano, Rossana
Computer applications; Law; Expert systems; Knowledge representation; Ontologies
This article describes an ontological model of norms. The basic assumption is that a substantial part of a legal system is grounded on the concept of agency. Since a legal system aims at regulating a society, then its goal can be achieved only by affecting the behaviour of the members of the society. We assume that a society is made up of agents (which can be individuals, institutions, software programs, etc.), that agents have beliefs, goals and preferences, and that they commit to intentions in order to choose a line of behaviour. The role of norms, within a legal system, is to specify how and when the chosen behaviour agrees with the basic principles of the legal system. In this article, we show how a model based on plans can be the basis for the ontological representation of norms, which are expressed as constraints on the possible plans an agent may choose to guide its behaviour. Moreover, the paper describes how the proposed model can be linked to the upper level of a philosophically well-founded ontology (DOLCE); in this way, the model is set in a wider perspective, which opens the way to further developments. (Author abstract)
Ontologies of professional legal knowledge as the basis for intelligent IT support for judges.
Benjamins, V. R.; Contreras, J.; Casanovas, P.; Ayuso, M.; Becue, M.; Lemus, L.; Urios, C.
Computer applications; Law; Expert systems; Knowledge representation; Ontologies; Users; Judges
In this paper, we describe the use of legal ontologies as a basis to improve IT support for professional judges. As opposed to most legal ontologies designed so far, which are mostly based on dogmatic and normative knowledge, we emphasize the importance of professional knowledge and experience as an important pillar for constructing the ontology. We describe an intelligent FAQ system for junior judges that intensively use the ontology. (Author abstract)
Using NLP techniques to identify legal ontology components: concepts and relations.
Lame, Guiraude
Computer applications; Law; Expert systems; Knowledge representation; Ontologies
A method to identify ontology components is presented in this article. The method relies on Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to extract concepts and relations among these concepts. This method is applied in the legal field to build an ontology dedicated to information retrieval. Legal texts on which the method is performed are carefully chosen as describing and conceptualizing the legal domain. We suggest that this method can help legal ontology designers and may be used while building ontologies dedicated to other tasks than information retrieval. (Author abstract)
A methodology to create legal ontologies in a logic programming based web information retrieval system.
Saias, Jose; Quaresma, Paulo
Online information retrieval; Law; World Wide Web; Searching; User interface; Human-computer interaction; Natural language processing; Logic programming; Ontologies
Web legal information retrieval systems need the capability to reason with the knowledge modeled by legal ontologies. Using this knowledge it is possible to represent and to make inferences about the semantic content of legal documents. In this paper a methodology for applying NLP techniques to automatically create a legal ontology is proposed. The ontology is defined in the OWL semantic web language and it is used in a logic programming framework, EVOLP + ISCO, to allow users to query the semantic content of the documents. ISCO allows an easy and efficient integration of declarative, object-oriented and constraint-based programming techniques with the capability to create connections with external databases. EVOLP is a dynamic logic programming framework allowing the definition of rules for actions and events. An application of the proposed methodology to the legal web information retrieval system of the Portuguese Attorney General’s Office is described. (Author abstract)
Towards a financial fraud ontology: a legal modelling approach.
Kingston, John; Schafer, Burkhard; Vandenberghe, Wim
Computer applications; Law; Fraud; Finance; Expert systems; Knowledge representation; Ontologies
This document discusses the status of research on detection and prevention of financial fraud undertaken as part of the IST European Commission funded FF POIROT (Financial Fraud Prevention Oriented Information Resources Using Ontology Technology) project. A first task has been the specification of the user requirements that define the functionality of the financial fraud ontology to be designed by the FF POIROT partners. It is claimed here that modeling fraudulent activity involves a mixture of law and facts as well as inferences about facts present, facts presumed or facts missing. The purpose of this paper is to explain this abstract model and to specify the set of user requirements. (Author abstract)
Artificial Intelligence in Medicine
2004, 32, n. 1
Ontology development for unified traditional Chinese medical language system
Fan, Weiyu; Wu, Lancheng; Wu, Zhaohui; Yin, Aining; Zhang, Ruen; Zhou, Xuezhong
Computer applications; Medicine; Traditional medicine; China; Knowledge acquisition; Ontology; Artificial intelligence
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) as a complete knowledge system researches into human health conditions via a different approach compared to orthodox medicine. We are developing a unified traditional Chinese medical language system (UTCMLS) through an ontology approach that will support TCM language knowledge storage, concept-based information retrieval and information integration. UTCMLS is a huge knowledge project, which is a broad collaboration of 16 distributed groups, most of them with no prior experience of formal ontology development. Therefore, the cooperative and comprehensive ontology engineering is crucial. We use Protege 2000 for ontology development of concepts and relationships that represent the domain and that will permit storage of TCM knowledge. This paper focuses on the methodology, design and development of ontology for UTCMLS. (Original abstract)
2005, v. 34, n. 3
Part-whole representation and reasoning in formal biomedical ontologies
Schulz, Stefan; Hahn, Udo
Artificial intelligence; Medicine; Taxonomies; Ontologies; Reasoning
Objective: Biomedical ontologies are typically structured in a biaxial way, reflecting both a taxonomic (is-a) and a partonomic (part-of) hierarchy. Commonly used biomedical terminologies, which incorporate such distinctions excel in terms of broad coverage but lack a rigid formal foundation. The latter, however, is a prerequisite for automated reasoning. For the biomedical domain, it is not only crucial to cope with ontological dependencies between wholes and their parts but also with specific reasoning patterns which underlie the propagation of roles across partonomic hierarchies. Methods: We scale down part-whole reasoning to subsumption-based taxonomic reasoning within the formal framework of a parsimonious variant of description logics (viz. ALC). Results: We provide a formal basis for ontological engineering in the domain of biomedicine, as far as part-whole relationships are concerned, by addressing typical reasoning patterns encountered in this domain. (Original abstract)
2006, v. 36, n. 1
A formal theory for spatial representation and reasoning in biomedical ontologies.
Donnelly, Maureen; Bittner, Thomas; Rosse, Cornelius
Medicine; Ontology; Knowledge representation; Spatial theory
Objective: The objective of this paper is to demonstrate how a formal spatial theory can be used as an important tool for disambiguating the spatial information embodied in biomedical ontologies and for enhancing their automatic reasoning capabilities. Method and materials: This paper presents a formal theory of parthood and location relations among individuals, called Basic Inclusion Theory (BIT). Since biomedical ontologies are comprised of assertions about classes of individuals (rather than assertions about individuals), we define parthood and location relations among classes in the extended theory Basic Inclusion Theory for Classes (BIT + Cl). We then demonstrate the usefulness of this formal theory for making the logical structure of spatial information more precise in two ontologies concerned with human anatomy: the Foundational Model of Anatomy (FMA) and GALEN. Results: We find that in both the FAAA and GALEN, class-level spatial relations with different logical properties are not always explicitly distinguished. As a result, the spatial information included in these biomedical ontologies is often ambiguous and the possibilities for implementing consistent automatic reasoning within or across ontologies are limited. Conclusion: Precise formal characterizations of all spatial relations assumed by a biomedical ontology are necessary to ensure that the information embodied in the ontology can be fully and coherently utilized in a computational environment. This paper can be seen as an important beginning step toward achieving this goal, but much more work along these lines is required. (Author abstract)
2006, v. 36, n. 2
Memoire: a framework for semantic interoperability of case-based reasoning systems in biology and medicine.
Bichindaritz, Isabelle
Artificial intelligence; Medicine; Biology; Case based reasoning; Semantic web; Ontologies; Interoperability; Memoire
Objective: Memoire is a framework for sharing and distributing case bases and case-based reasoning (CBR) systems in biology and medicine. Methods and material: This paper first introduces the semantic Web approach to build a better Web where search engines, knowledge sources and servers, applications and services can live, work, and learn in cooperation. This semantic approach is particularly well suited for biomedical domains because significant ontologies have been developed there and constitute a sound basis for the standardization effort required for the semantic Web. Case-based reasoning systems in biomedicine have also benefited from these biomedical ontologies and models. Results: This article demonstrates for three such systems how a semantics infused approach in CBR gives better, more accurate results in CBR. From this previous work on a semantic approach in CBR in biomedicine, the Memoire framework has evolved. Conclusion: Memoire proposes a unified OWL-based representation language for cases and case-based ontologies in biomedicine, where a Web Ontology Language (OWL) is a language to represent ontologies on the Web. Memoire provides a set of tools for building case-based reasoning systems compliant with its language. Memoire is extensible and can be adapted to different types of biomedical application domains, tasks, and environments. Memoire will permit bridging the gap within the multiple case-based reasoning systems dedicated to a single domain, and make available to agents and Web services the case-based competency of the CBR systems adopting its interchange language. The approach could be extended to other application domains of CBR. (Author abstract)
2006, v. 37, n. 3
Using ontologies linked with geometric models to reason about penetrating injuries.
Rubin, Daniel L.; Dameron, Olivier; Bashir, Yasser; Grossman, David; Dev, Parvati; Musen, Mark A.
Computer applications; Medicine; Anatomy ontologies; Computer reasoning; Medical imaging
Objective: Medical assessment of penetrating injuries is a difficult and knowledge-intensive task, and rapid determination of the extent of internal injuries is vital for triage and for determining the appropriate treatment. Physical examination and computed tomographic (CT) imaging data must be combined with detailed anatomic, physiologic, and biomechanical knowledge to assess the injured subject. We are developing a methodology to automate reasoning about penetrating injuries using canonical knowledge combined with specific subject image data. Methods and material: In our approach, we build a three-dimensional geometric model of a subject from segmented images. We link regions in this model to entities in two knowledge sources: (1) a comprehensive ontology of anatomy containing organ identities, adjacencies, and other information useful for anatomic reasoning and (2) an ontology of regional perfusion containing formal definitions of arterial anatomy and corresponding regions of perfusion. We created computer reasoning services (“problem solvers”) that use the ontologies to evaluate the geometric model of the subject and deduce the consequences of penetrating injuries. Results: We developed and tested our methods using data from the Visible Human. Our problem solvers can determine the organs that are injured given particular trajectories of projectiles, whether vital structures – such as a coronary artery – are injured, and they can predict the propagation of injury ensuing after vital structures are injured. Conclusion: We have demonstrated the capability of using ontologies with medical images to support computer reasoning about injury based on those images. Our methodology demonstrates an approach to creating intelligent computer applications that reason with image data, and it may have value in helping practitioners in the assessment of penetrating injury. (Author abstract)
Aslib Proceedings: New Information Perspectives
Effectiveness of UMLS semantic network as a seed ontology for building a medical domain ontology.
Na, Jin-Cheon; Neoh, Hock Leng
Descriptors: Online information retrieval; Medical informatics; Semantics
Purpose – The purpose of this article is to examine the effectiveness of the unified medical language system (UMLS) semantic network as a seed ontology for building a medical field ontology. Design /methodology/approach – The information extraction process known as the knowledge engineering approach was used to extract concepts and their semantic relations from documents on ‘colon cancer treatment’. The UMLS semantic network was used as a seed ontology, and was extended and enriched with the extracted concepts and semantic relations using Protege. Findings – Only half of the semantic relations extracted manually were defined (or inferable) in the UMLS semantic network. The remaining half could be added to the network to extend its coverage. In addition, two semantic types in the network were found to be too general and four new sublevel semantic types were proposed to make them more specific. Research limitations/implications – Since only 109 research paper abstracts in the ‘colon cancer treatment’ domain were analyzed in this study, more abstracts from the colon cancer treatment domain as well as from other cancer treatment domains (such as breast cancer treatment) can be analyzed to give a better generalization of our findings. Originality/value – This study shares our findings on the effectiveness of the UMLS semantic network as a seed ontology for building a medical domain ontology, and also provides the basic guidelines for building or extending a medical domain ontology using the UMLS. Adapted from the source document.
BiD: Textos Universitaris de Biblioteconomia i Documentacio
NextLib: a software system based on ontologies for automatically accessing OPAC from specialised websites
Vidal, Lledo Felip; Orduna-Malea, Enrique
Descriptors: Online catalogues; Web sites; Software; NextLib
The numbers of functions of web browser add-ons are increasing. Such add-ons included the recently launched LibX. This tool enables interaction between libraries’ online public access computers (OPAC) and the Web. This paper examines the limitations of this tool, in terms of the automatic detection of data and the automation of tasks. A system (NextLib) is proposed that can overcome these limitations by using a combination of different applications. This system is made up of a semantic database (LibX), a programme for automatically detecting data (Data Detector) and a learning by example (LBE) programme. The integration of these tools may allow greater interaction between the user and a website, and between a website and an OPAC. Adapted from the source document.
2005, v. 23, n. 5
Web semantico e ontologie. The semantic Web and ontologies
Canali, Daniela
World Wide Web; Semantic web; Ontologies
A new development in online communication, the Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation. Fundamental to the Semantic Web are ontologies with a high structural level which specifically describe the concepts of class (generic objects in domains of interest), relationships existing between objects, and the properties of such objects. Analyses how ontologies are constructed and how they can be very useful in structuring and defining the meaning of metadata terms used. Examines the following aspects: ontology mapping and the Resource Description Framework; ontologies and portals, such as OntoWeb and the Open Directory project; ontologies and non-textual digital objects, domain ontologies; and Semantic Web applications, as in MIT’s Java Haystack software program, among others. Original article in Italian. (Quotes from original text)
2004, v. 44, n. 2
Appunti per un’ ontologia delle biblioteche digitali: considerazioni sulla Bibtioteca digitate Italiana. Notes for an ontology of digital libraries: considerations on the Italian Digital Library
Leombroni, Claudio
Digital libraries; Ontology; Italy; Italian Digital Library
The most important Italian public policies regarding digital libraries are examined. The arguments, more political-institutional than technical, will give extensive emphasis to the project of the Italian Digital Library promoted by the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities, but with at least equal extensiveness they will also try to explain, on the basis of a confrontation with this project, a sort of ontology of digital libraries. The term ontology is used simply to indicate the specifications of a particular conceptual sphere together with its relative relations and for defining the commitment that language assumes towards that same sphere. Basically it will be sought to enumerate and define a minimum nucleus of objects and concepts included in the dominium of interest the boundary of which is marked by digital libraries, to outline a possible agreement (in ontology it would be defined an ontological commitment) on a vocabulary that is coextensive with that dominium. The commitment to agree on the adoption of a shared vocabulary is after all essential for attempting to outline a vision or at least for imagining a long-term strategy for public policies in this sector. The IDL (Italian Digital Library) project (born between the end of 1998 and 1999 within the sphere of the General Management for library heritage, cultural institutions and publishing) and the subsequent scenario of integration of systems designed by the NTC project, apart from a few debatable architectural elements, define a national strategy of the sector. The success of this strategy will depend on the capacity to deal with three orders of problems: 1) share this strategy with all levels of government foreseen by our social order; 2) guarantee the participation of library services and cultural institutes; 3) define a new cooperative environment that is able to make different institutes (archives, libraries, museums and other agencies involved in the digital world), different cultures and languages, cooperate with one another without sacrificing their differences and without sacrificing their overall intelligence, or their ability to manage the whole. Original article in Italian. (Original abstract)
Bulletin of Library and Information Science
2006, n. 56
Ontology-based approach of semantic query system the national palace museum as a case study.
Hsiao, Chih-Tung; Huang, Yin-Ping; Yang, Feng-Chao
Online information retrieval; Searching; Query formulation; Semantic analysis; Keywords; Ontologies; Museums; Taiwan; National Palace Museum
Query system is significant to the information management of museums. This study aims at demonstrating major differences between Ontology-Based Semantic Query System and Keyword-Based Query System by making a case study of the National Palace Museum. According to a survey of the most popularly visited museums around the world in 2002, the National Palace Museum was ranked the sixth place with the number of visitors up to 2.1 million. Bringing the National Palace Museum into the focus of discussion, this article will analyze its model of the Ontology-Based Semantic Query System. This article proposes that an intelligent and creative query system must be able to provide an interactive interface for researchers, system managers, and visitors. (Author abstract)
Cataloging & Classification Quarterly
2004, v. 37, n. 1/2
The IFF foundation for ontological knowledge organization
Kent, Robert E
Information communication; Knowledge organization; Semantic relations; Terminology; Metadata; Taxonomy; Ontologies
This paper discusses an axiomatic approach for the semantic integration of ontologies, an approach that extends to first order logic, a previous approach based on information flow. This axiomatic approach is represented in the Information Flow Framework (IFF), a metalevel framework for organizing the information that appears in digital libraries, distributed databases and ontologies. The paper argues that the semantic integration of ontologies is the two-step process of alignment and unification. Ontological alignment consists of the sharing of common terminology and semantics through a mediating ontology. Ontological unification, concentrated in a virtual ontology of community connections, is fusion of the alignment diagram of participant community ontologies – the quotient of the sum of the participant portals modulo the ontological alignment structure. Copies of this article are available for fee from the Haworth Document Delivery Service http: //docdelivery@haworthpress. (Original abstract)
2005, v. 39, n. 3/4
RDFS: FRBR – towards an implementation model for library catalogs using semantics web technology
Gradmann, Stefan
Cataloguing; Semantics; Bibliographic records; Ontologies; Models; Functional requirements for bibliographic records
The paper sets out from a few basic observations (bibliographic information is still mostly part of the “hidden Web”, library automation methods still have a low WWW-transparency, and take-up of FRBR has been rather slow) and continues taking a closer look at Semantic Web technology components. This results in a proposal for implementing FRBR as RDF-Schema and of RDF-based library catalogues built on such an approach. The contribution concludes with a discussion of selected strategic benefits resulting from such an approach. Copies of this article are available for a fee from the Haworth Document Delivery Service docdelivery@haworthpress.com. (Original abstract)
CIT – Journal of Computing and Information Technology
2005, v. 13, n. 4
Simple classification into large topic ontology of web documents
Grobelnik, Marko; Mladenic, Dunja
Online information retrieval; Classification; Ontologies; Web sites
The paper presents an approach to classifying Web documents into large topic ontology. The main emphasis is on having a simple approach appropriate for handling a large ontology and providing it with enriched data by including additional information on the Web page context obtained from the link structure of the Web. The context is generated from the in-coming and out-going links of the Web document we want to classify (the target document), meaning that for representing a document we use not only text of the document itself, but also the text from the documents pointing to the target document, as well as the text from the documents the target document is pointing to. The idea is that providing enriched data is compensating for the simplicity of the approach while keeping it efficient and capable of handling large topic ontology. (Original abstract)
Documentaliste – Sciences de l’Information
In Order to Increase Knowledge: Coordinate Systems, Official Data, Thesaurus, Ontologies, Taxonomies…and More
Bourdon, Francoise
Descriptors: Interoperability; Information communication; Semantic web
Francoise Bourdon, organizer of a colloquium dealing with the role of referentials in the interoperability of information systems, relates the established Afnor to the more recent semantic web, focusing on how interoperability works on the web. Explains still-to-be-developed methods involving algorithms which allow people of different disciplines to share knowledge. Adapted from the source document.
2007, v. 25, n. 2
Improving the search process through ontology-based adaptive semantic search.
Yang, Chyan; Yang, Keng-Chieh; Yuan, Hsu-Chieh
Search strategies; Semantics; Ontologies; Online information retrieval
Purpose – The purpose of this research is to describe an efficient search methodology to help improve the search results in the top portion of a lengthy search list. When facing a lengthy search list, people often limit themselves to the top ten items on the list, even though there may be more useful information after the top ten items. Design/methodology/approach – This study proposes an ontology-based adaptive semantic search to significantly improve the search experience. To capture the semantic difference of search terms, naive ontology is used to store the relationship among terms. Before a search term is processed by the search engine Lucene, the related words of the search term are selected from ontology structures to form new query phrases in the process of query expansion. The weighting of the expanded query phrases is dynamically learned by observing the users’ clicking behaviors. Findings – Research results show that with the aid of ontology the average precision rate of all cases is dramatically higher than the precision rate for the default search result. Even in the worst cases, in some situations, this ontology is still close to the precision rate for the default search result. Originality/value – This paper shows how it is possible to improve the precision rate of items retrieved alter a search and thus avoid information overload. (Author abstract)
2004, v. 21, n. 4
Expressing inter-link constraints in OWL knowledge bases
Kothari, Cartik R; Russomanno, David J
Computer applications; Expert systems; Knowledge based systems; Semantic web; Ontology; Web Ontology Language
In this paper the Web Ontology Language (OWL) is examined to instantiate expert system knowledge bases intended for semantic Web applications. In particular, OWL is analyzed for expressing Unified Modeling Language (UML) representations that have been augmented with prepositional logic asserted as inter-link constraints. The motivation is ultimately to provide declarative prepositional logic constraints that can be represented in UML and declaratively implemented using OWL and other constructs to realize semantic Web knowledge base repositories and databases to facilitate expert system applications. The results of this paper show that OWL is sufficient for capturing most inter-link constraints asserted on generalization/specialization instances; however, OWL alone is inadequate for representing some inter-link constraints asserted on associations. We propose enhancements to OWL via RDF extensions for the reification of associations into classes. These extensions mitigate all concerns that were identified in OWL as part of this study. The result is increased support of declarative constraint representations, which can be expressed in knowledge bases in the context of the semantic Web. (Original abstract)
Faslname-Ye Ketab/Library and Information Studies
2007, v. 18, n. 2
Creating a Persian ontology through thesaurus reengineering for organizing the digital library of the National Library of Iran
Khosravi, Fariborz; Vazifedoost, Alireza
information retrieval; Thesauri; Ontologies; Digital libraries; National libraries; Iran
One of the most important features a digital library is the information retrieval system. Giving semantic search capability to such system is the goal of research in current decade. Semantic search requires establishing knowledge enabled by intelligent inferences based on an ontology. There is currently no ontology for the Persian language. Since the creation of an ontology from scratch is time consuming it was decided to reengineer a current thesaurus in the Persian language named ASFA to create the ontology using an automatic ontology learning methods. This methodology is proposed in this paper. This ontology will be used to organize contents in digital library of the National Library of Iran. Adapted from the source document.
A Model for Ontology Quality Evaluation
Stvilia, Besiki
Ontologies; Searching
Ontologies are important knowledge representation and sharing tools in the workflow of biology research. The high cost of creating and maintaining ontologies encourages their sharing and reuse, and an increasing number of ontologies have been made available from different sources, with different models of curation. To enable effective selection, reuse, integration, and maintenance of these ontologies, however, one needs to have a systematic method of evaluating and connecting their quality to the context of an intended use. Based on an analysis of the activity system and Web server logs of the morphbank biodiversity research data repository, a model was developed to evaluate ontology quality. The model connects the types of quality problems with the types of research activities and suggests relevant metrics. The paper also describes the structure of some of the research activities and the types and patterns of end-user searches in morphbank. Adapted from the source document.
The World is Not Flat: Expertise and InPho
Allen, Cotin; Buckner, Cameron; Niepert, Mathias
Descriptors: Ontologies; Philosophy
The Indiana Philosophy Ontology (InPhO) is a “dynamic ontology” for the domain of philosophy derived from human input and software analysis. The structured nature of the ontology supports machine reasoning about philosophers and their ideas. It is dynamic because it tracks changes in the content of the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. This paper discusses ways of managing the varying expertise of people who supply input to the InPhO and provide feedback on the automated methods. Adapted from the source document.
2004, v. 19, n. 1
Realizing the hydrogen economy through semantic web technologies
Hunter, Jane; Drennan, John; Little, Suzanne
Online information retrieval; Fuel cells; Hydrogen; World Wide Web; Semantic web; Searching; Data mining; Australia; Queensland University; Fuel Cell Understanding through Semantic Inferencing, Ontologies and Nanotechnology; FUSION
Experts have been saying that we have only another 40 or so years of cheap recoverable crude oil left. Hydrogen fuel cells offer an alternative, clean, reliable source of energy for residential use, transport, and remote communities. Many observers view as inevitable the transition from an economy powered by fossil fuels to one based on hydrogen. Before that can happen, materials scientists face the research challenges of improving fuel cells’ efficiency, reducing their production costs, determining how they degrade over time, extending their life, and recycling their components. The University of Queensland’s Distributed Systems Technology Centre and the Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis are working on FUSION (Fuel Cell Understanding through Semantic Inferencing, Ontologies and Nanotechnology) a collaborative project that’s applying, extending, and combining Semantic Web technologies and image analysis techniques to optimize fuel cell design. The project is developing metadata schemas, ontologies, semantic-inferencing rules, and visualization tools. These products aim to streamline the capture and assimilation of large mixed-media data sets to reveal trends and correlations between the manufacturing conditions, microstructural information, and performance of fuel cells. The technologies being developed could set new paradigms for knowledge management and sharing across a wide range of scientific and microstructural engineering applications. (Original abstract)
Knowledge representation with ontologies: the present and future
Brewster, Christopher; O’Hara, Kieron; Fuller, Steve; Wilks, Yorick; Franconi, Enrico; Musen, Mark A; Ellman, Jeremy; Shum, Simon Buckingham
Computer applications; Expert systems; Knowledge representation; Ontologies
Recently, there’s been an explosion of interest in ontologies as artifacts to represent human knowledge and as critical components in knowledge management, the Semantic Web, business-to-business applications, and several other application areas. Various research communities commonly assume that ontologies are the appropriate modeling structure for representing knowledge. However, little discussion has occurred regarding the actual range of knowledge an ontology can successfully represent. This installment of Trends and Controversies brings together several practitioners to debate this issue. (Original abstract)
2004, v. 19, n. 3
SECO: mediation services for Semantic Web data
Harth, Andreas
Computerized information storage and retrieval; World Wide Web; Semantic web; Searching; Ontologies; Semantics; Metadata; Resource Description Framework; SECO
The Semantic Web has motivated grassroots efforts to develop and publish ontology specifications in RDF. So far, most RDF data online has not been fully utilized. In this article, the author describes SECO (semantic collaboration), an infrastructure that lets agents uniformly access data that is potentially scattered across the Web. SECO aggregates, integrates, and displays RDF data obtained from the Semantic Web. SECO collects the RDF data available in files using a crawler and uses RDF repositories as sources for data. Integration tasks over the various data sources, such as object consolidation and schema mapping, are carried out using a reasoning engine and are encapsulated in mediators, which software agents can query using a remote query interface. SECO includes a user interface component that emits HTML, which lets human users browse the integrated data set. (Original abstract)
Ontology-based search for interactive digital maps
Hubner, Sebastian; Spittel, Rainer; Visser, Ubbo; Vogele, Thomas J
Computerized information storage and retrieval; World Wide Web; Semantic web; Searching; Ontologies; Semantics; Maps; GeoShare
This article describes the application GeoShare, which participated in the Semantic Web Challenge 2003. As their motivating example, the authors describe a tourist who is planning a bike trip and looking for nice locations for fishing and bathing. Therefore, he needs information regarding water quality-that is, information that has not only a thematic but also a spatial and temporal context. The authors provide a detailed look at the technologies GeoShare uses, including ontologies for describing vocabularies and catalogs as well as semantics-related keyword search. They also present their group’s spatial reasoner and its application in a spatial data infrastructure consisting of a Web Catalog Service, distributed Web Map Services, and a Generic Web Map Client. (Original abstract)
2004, v. 19, n. 4
Ontology versioning in an ontology management framework
Noy, Natalya F; Musen, Mark A
Computer applications; Expert systems; Knowledge representation; Ontologies
As ontology development becomes a more ubiquitous and collaborative process, developers face challenges in managing multiple ontologies, including comparing, aligning, and merging them; maintaining versions; and translating between different formalisms. The uniform framework presented in this article assists users with these tasks by leveraging data and algorithms developed for one tool in other tools. (Original abstract)
Filtering and selecting semantic web services with interactive composition techniques
Sirin, Evren; Parsia, Bijan; Hendler, James
Computer applications; World Wide Web; Semantic web; Ontologies
Creating novel functionality by means of composing existing Web Services is essential for a variety of applications. A main problem for automated Web Service composition is the gap between the concepts people use and the data computers interpret. An interactive approach overcomes this barrier using Semantic Web technologies. This approach uses contextual information to find the matching services at each step of the composition. The matches are filtered using ontological reasoning on the semantic descriptions of the services. The authors have developed a prototype on the basis of these ideas and tested their system by generating OWL-S descriptions for some of the common Web Services. The approach is also applicable to other network environments where devices provide their functionalities as Web Services and their capabilities are described using Web Ontologies. (Original abstract)
Authorization and privacy for Semantic Web Services
Kagal, Lalana; Paolucci, Massimo; Srinivasan, Naveen; Denker, Grit; Finin, Tim; Sycara, Katia
Computer applications; World Wide Web; Semantic web; Computer security; Authorization; Confidentiality; Privacy; Ontologies
This article addresses the security of Semantic Web Services that are declaratively described in OWL-S. The authors propose ontologies to annotate OWL-S input and output parameters with respect to their security characteristics, including encryption and digital signatures. They incorporate privacy and authentication policies into OWL-S descriptions and requester profiles. The authors have designed and implemented algorithms to check policy compliance and integrated them in the OWL-S Matchmaker’s service selection process. They also discuss extending the OWL-S VM with features for encrypting and signing messages exchanged between a service requester and provider. (Original abstract)
Value webs: using ontologies to bundle real-world services
Akkermans, Hans; Baida, Ziv; Gordijn, Jaap; Pena, Nieves; Altuna, Ander; Laresgoiti, Inaki
Computer applications; World Wide Web; Ontologies; OBELIX project
The production of real-world services involves a mixture of intangible and physical elements, including goods, actions, and the people required for delivery. In many cases, companies don’t offer just a single service to a customer but a more or less interrelated collection of them: service bundles. This enables broader, better coverage of customers’ needs while achieving scale and scope efficiencies in service cost by sharing and reusing service elements. Both business analysis and the design of real-world service bundles stand to benefit from a semantic approach. The OBELIX project has developed a component-based ontology for real-world services, along with methods and tools for graphical modeling of services and for knowledge-based configuration of service bundles. It has tested the ontology, methods, and tools on real-world case studies in different industry sectors. (Original abstract)
Dynamic invocation of Semantic Web Services that use unfamiliar ontologies
Burstein, Mark H
Computer applications; World Wide Web; Semantic web; Ontologies
Semantic Web Services are Web Services accompanied by semantic descriptions of what they do and how to use them. These descriptions are seen as key to eliminating the need to program to an API, opening the possibility that such services can be automatically discovered and invoked by software agents developed entirely independently. However, the Semantic Web lacks a universal ontology for describing Semantic Web Services. Looking in detail at the process of invoking an unfamiliar service reveals the various types of translation it might require, providing insight into when and how translation should be done. (Original abstract)
Why evaluate ontology technologies? Because it works!
Sure, York; Gomez-Perez, Asuncion; Daelemans, Walter; Reinberger, Marie-Laure; Guarino, Nicola; Noy, Natalya F
Computer applications; World Wide Web; Semantic web; Ontologies; Evaluation; User needs
Ontology technologies are popular and attract much attention because they’re cornerstones for realizing the Semantic Web. This issue’s Trends and Controversies explores different perspectives on evaluating ontology technologies. It examines the distinction between evaluating ontology tools and ontology content and also discusses ontology consumers’ needs. (Original abstract)
2004, v. 19, n. 6
Making biomedical ontologies and ontology repositories work
Noy, Natalya F; Rubin, Daniel L; Musen, Mark A
Computer applications; Health care; Medicine; Expert systems; Knowledge representation; Ontologies; Repositories
Considerable difficulty is involved in standardizing the databases, metadata formats, and knowledge bases that contain the wealth of information available to the biomedical community. One possible solution is to create virtual ontology repositories, which would let users rate and compare the ontologies as well as making the ontologies searchable and easier to browse. Developers could use tools such as Protege to create, manage, and maintain those repositories. (Original abstract)
2005, v. 20, n. 2
Modeling with the Semantic Web in the geosciences
Reitsma, Femke; Albrecht, Jochen
Computer applications; Earth sciences; World Wide Web; Semantic web; Expert systems; Knowledge representation; Ontologies; Mathematical models
Earth system science deals with complex systems that pose many significant representation challenges. Modeling the earth system involves numerous interacting components, each of which can be further dissected into subcomponents that specialists in a wide range of disciplines can study. Ontologies as knowledge repositories have been developed to support the primary goal of sharing knowledge in a manner that aids understanding. However, the development of ontologies for geoscience disciplines has been limited to keyword lists for classification. Researchers have yet to tap the potential of ontologies and the Semantic Web for scientific modeling and simulation. Expressing and using semantics in modeling earth systems will enhance our ability to do science and could lead to new insights into the studied environmental systems and a greater understanding of methods used to represent those systems. (Original abstract)
2005, v. 20, n. 5
Ontology-centered syndromic surveillance for bioterrorism.
Crubezy, Monica; O’Connor, Martin; Buckeridge, David L.; Pincus, Zachary; Musen, Mark A.
Surveillance; Knowledge based systems; Ontologies; Terrorism; Homeland security; Intelligent systems
Syndromic surveillance requires acquiring and analyzing data that might suggest early epidemics in a community, long before there’s categorical evidence of unusual infection. These data are often heterogeneous and noisy, and public health analysts must interpret them with a combination of analytic methods. Syndromic surveillance thus involves integrating data, configuring problem-solving strategies, and mapping integrated data to appropriate methods. The knowledge-based systems community has studied these tasks for years. We present a software architecture that supports knowledge-based data integration and problem solving, thereby facilitating many syndromic surveillance aspects. Central to our approach, a set of reference ontologies supports semantic integration, and a parallelizable blackboard architecture implements invocation of appropriate problem-solving methods and reasoning control. We demonstrate our approach with BioStorm, an experimental system that offers an end-to-end solution to syndromic surveillance. This article is part of a special issue on Homeland Security. (Author abstract)
2005, v. 20, n. 6
Customized delivery of e-government Web services.
Medjahed, Brahim; Bouguettaya, Athman
Electronic information services; Electronic government; Semantic web; Ontologies
Senior citizens are challenged in ways that are fundamentally different from other age groups. Services must be delivered to them in ways that are suitable to their inherent age-related limitations. A novel approach for the automatic delivery of customized e-government Web services to senior citizens includes algorithms to automatically generate composite Web services that meet user needs and government laws and regulations. Ontologies aid the customized delivery of these services. (Author abstract)
2006, v. 21, n. 1
Searching the Semantic Web: approximate query processing based on ontologies.
Corby, Olivier; Dieng-Kuntz, Rose; Faron-Zucker, Catherine; Gandon, Fabien
Semantic web; Searching; Ontologies; Query formulation; Resource Description Framework
In the context of the Semantic Web, many possible executing queries wouldn’t retrieve any resources. This is because the viewpoints of ontology designers, annotation designers, and users performing a Web search don’t always match, leading to missed answers. Approximate query processing is thus of prime importance for efficiently searching the Semantic Web. The Corese ontology-based search engine handles RDF Schema, part of and OWL Lite and RDF metadata, and can process approximate queries. This article is part of a special issue on AI, Agents, and the Web. (Author abstract)
Foundational challenges in automated Semantic Web data and ontology cleaning.
Alonso-Jimenez, Jose A.; Borrego-Diaz, Joaquin; Chavez-Gonzalez, Antonia M.; Martin-Mateos, Francisco J.
Semantic web; Intelligent agents
Applying automated reasoning systems to data cleaning in the Semantic Web raises many foundational challenges regarding cleaning-agent design. The authors discuss these challenges and then argue that we can achieve logic trust in the Semantic Web only if it’s based on certified reasoning. This article is part of the special issue entitled AI, Agents, and the Web. (Author abstract)
Applying Semantic Web technologies to drug safety determination.
Stephens, Susie; Morales, Alfredo; Quinlan, Matthew
Semantic web; Drug information; Resource Description Framework; Semantics; Ontologies; Data processing
Identifying signals of events that lead to undesirable outcomes is historically one of the most challenging aspects of determining drug safety, both during the drug discovery and development process and once a drug is released to the market. The information required to identify signals resides in disparate and distributed data repositories located in different functional groups and even separate organizations. The Semantic Web provides new capabilities for data integration that exploits explicit semantics and well-defined ontologies. These technologies promise to simplify heterogeneous data integration and allow logic to infer additional insights from the data. The Oracle RDF Data Model integrated with Cerebra Server is a composite solution that addresses the complexities of mediating information in drug safety. A use case illustrates the situation and how the composite solution might help. (Author abstract)
2006, v. 21, n. 3
Knowledge publishing and access on the Semantic Web: a sociotechnological analysis.
Motta, Enrico
Semantic web; Knowledge representation; Ontologies; Publishing; Semantics
The Semantic Web extends the current Web with a semantic layer, which can be reasoned upon by semantic-aware agents. The idea is that this semantic layer will enable a greater degree of task automation and user support than is possible with the current Web. Here, the author speculates on the Semantic Web’s implications for knowledge publishing and access, which will be brought about by the existence of massive amounts of semantic data on the Web. In particular, the author considers how an ontology-driven world might lead to the imposition of conceptual viewpoints on formal knowledge production, which might threaten the democratic nature of knowledge publishing on the Web. However, he also argues that this risk can be avoided if researchers exploit the inherent flexibility and “smartness” associated with semantic technologies and succeed in connecting the process of constructing the Semantic Web to the social dynamics shaping the current Web. This article is part of a special issue on the Future of AI. (Author abstract)
2006, v. 21, n. 5
Uncertainty and the Semantic Web.
Stoilos, Giorgos; Simou, Nikos; Stamou, Giorgos; Kollias, Stefanos
Semantic web; Ontology Web Language; Fuzzy logic
The Semantic Web must handle applications that face uncertain and imprecise information, including random, fuzzy, missing, and distorted knowledge. Many researchers have proposed extending OWL and Description Logic to deal with such uncertainty. f-OWL, a fuzzy extension to OWL, can capture imprecise and vague knowledge. The accompanying Fuzzy Reasoning Engine lets f-OWL capture and reason about such knowledge. (Author abstract)
2006, v. 21, n. 6
Agent-based semantic service discovery for healthcare: an organizational approach.
Caceres, Cesar; Fernandez, Alberto; Ossowski, Sascha; Vasirani, Matteo
Intelligent agents; Health care; Semantic web; Medical informatics; Ontologies
This article is part of a special issue on Intelligent Agents in Healthcare. E-health is one of the fastest-growing application areas for intelligent mobile services. The ever-growing number and variety of health-related devices and tasks calls for mechanisms to automatically discover, invoke, and coordinate the corresponding services. This, in turn, requires languages and tools that support a semantically rich description of e-health services. This article focuses on service discovery for medical-emergency management. A new mechanism for semantic service discovery complements existing approaches by considering relevant parts of the organizational context in which e-health services are used, to improve system usability in emergencies. This approach is reusable in other application areas, especially in the medical field. (Author abstract)
2008, v. 23, n. 1
Toward the semantic desktop: the seMouse approach.
Iturrioz, Jon; Diaz, Oscar; Anzuola, Sergio F.
Information management; Semantic analysis; Ontology
Powering desktops with metadata is a promising approach leading to the semantic desktop, which will treat files as desktop ontology resources. This ontology will capture a mental model of how the user conceptualizes files, and serve to semantically reinterpret current file operations. A .doc artifact will no longer be a mere file, but rather a knowledge base resource. The user will no longer create such files, but rather instances of ontological classes. Likewise, zipping operations won’t require sequentially selecting files to zip together. Instead, the semantic desktop will automatically traverse semantic associations to locate the resources to zip. The seMouse approach realizes this vision. This system provides seamless integration between file-centered tooling and semantically aware, resource-centered applications. The mouse acts as a bridge between the world of traditional files and the world of resources. Traditional tooling is still available, but the semantic mouse also enables reinterpreting traditional file operations from a semantic perspective. In this perspective, resource edition, classification, copying, and zipping benefit from the underlying ontology. Adapted from the source document.
Informacijos Mokslai/Information Sciences
2005, n. 34
Software component ontology and its construction
Bagusyte, Lina; Lupeikiene, Audrone
Software engineering; Ontologies
Component-based approach to the development of software and information systems enables reuse of components – building blocks of large-scale artefacts. However, even the various component technologies are becoming widely used, the concept of component was developed in a rather experimental way. Component-based paradigm lacks an adequate treatment at the conceptual level. Moreover, the same terms refer to quite different concepts. Ontology provides the commitments on the terms that are shared by different agents in systems development. So the use of proper software component ontology for the search of components and construction of the new ones becomes reasonable. This paper surveys and analyses the proposed component ontologies, defines the generic component ontology and discusses the construction principles of software component ontology. The aim is to identify the differences between software component ontology and component model, determine the fundamental and other reusable ontologies to be used for the construction of software component ontology. Adapted from the source document.
2004, v. 8, n. 10
Overeenkomsten en verschillen: thesauri, taxonomieen en ontologieen. Similarities and differences: thesauri, taxonomies and ontologies
Gilchrist, Alan
Knowledge organisation; Taxonomies; Thesauri; Ontologies; Searching
As information is increasingly delivered via online systems discussions have centred on the need to improve search and retrieval methods. Attention is currently focussed on the use of taxonomy systems as a means of improving retrieval results. A recent survey of searches undertaken on Altavista showed that half the users employed 2 or less search terms. Moreover the lack of coordinated subject thesauri underlines the need for the development of standardised taxonomial systems to aid both automated indexing and navigation of databases.
2005, v. 9, n. 2
Bouwstenen voor semantisch publiceren: van thesaurusverrijking naar ontologieen. Building blocks for semantic publishing: from thesaurus enrichment to ontologies
Kircz, Joost; Goris, Gert; Drenthe, Gusta
Thesauri; Semantic analysis; Scholarly publishing; Articles; Ontologies
Contribution to a special issue on the use of taxonomic and semantic indexing systems in thesaurus construction. Articles published in academic journals follow a standard pattern including introduction, methodology, results obtained and conclusion, enabling other researchers to browse quickly in order to gain an overall view of the research. Articles published online, however, must be broken down into a series of separate units. At Rotterdam’s Erasmus University a project is currently investigating methods of subdividing articles using a semantic approach. A series of thesauri are required to cover different academic disciplines. Original article in Dutch.
2006, v. 10, n. 12
OWL: Web Ontology Language. [OWL: Web Ontology Language.]
Isaac, Antoine; Schlobach, Stefan
OWL; Ontologies; Classification; Online information retrieval; World Wide Web
In order to understand natural language computers require ontological systems which provide formal descriptions of the world of knowledge. The World Wide Web Consortium recommends the adoption of OWL (Web Ontology Language) on account of its compatibility with established systems such as XML, RDF and RDF classification. OWL offers a simplified method of constructing library catalogues as well as online databases using Dublin Core descriptors. In future OWL will doubtless be a first choice for heritage organisations seeking solutions to the problems of semantic interoperability.
Information and Software Technology
2005, v. 47, n. 12
An approach to ontology for institutional facts in the semantic web
Colomb, Robert M; Dampney, C N G
World Wide Web; Semantic web; Software engineering; Ontologies; Mathematical models
Refinement in software engineering allows a specification to be developed in stages, with design decisions taken at earlier stages constraining the design at later stages. Refinement in complex data models is difficult due to lack of a way of defining constraints, which can be progressively maintained over increasingly detailed refinements. Category theory provides a way of stating wide scale constraints. These constraints lead to a set of design guidelines, which maintain the wide scale constraints under increasing detail. Previous methods of refinement are essentially local, and the proposed method does not interfere very much with these local methods. The result is particularly applicable to semantic web applications, where ontologies provide systems of more or less abstract constraints on systems, which must be implemented and therefore refined by participating systems. With the approach of this paper, the concept of committing to an ontology carries much more force. (Original abstract)
2006, v. 48, n. 7
Towards an ontology-based approach for specifying and securing Web services.
Maamar, Z.; Narendra, N. C.; Sattanathan, S.
World Wide Web; Web sites; Computer security
With the increasing popularity of Web services and increasing complexity of satisfying needs of users, there has been a renewed interest in Web services composition. Composition addresses the case of a user request that cannot be satisfied by any available Web service, whereas a composite service obtained by integrating Web services might be used. Because Web services originate from different providers, their composition faces the obstacle of the context heterogeneity of Web services. An unawareness or poor consideration of this heterogeneity during Web services composition and execution result in a lack of the quality and relevancy of information that permits tracking the composition, monitoring the execution, and handling exceptions. This paper presents an ontology-based approach for context reconciliation. The approach also focuses on the security breaches that threaten the integrity of the context of Web services, and proposes appropriate means to achieve this integrity. (Author abstract)
Information Management and Computer Security
Ontologies for information security management and governance
dos Santos Moreira, Edson; Fondazzi Martimiano, Luciana Andreia; dos Santos Brandao, Antonio Jose; Bernardes, Mauro Cesar
Data security; Knowledge management; Ontologies
Purpose-This paper aims to show the difficulties involved in dealing with the quantity, diversity and the lack of semantics security information. It seeks to propose the use of ontologies to tackle the problem. Design/methodology/approach-The paper describes the general methodology to create security ontologies and illustrates the case with the design and validation of two ontologies: System vulnerabilities and security incidents. Findings-Two examples of ontologies, one related to systems vulnerability and the other related to security incidents (designed to illustrate this proposal) are described. The portability/reusability propriety is demonstrated, inferring that the information structured at lower levels (by security management tools and people) can be successfully used and understood at higher levels (by security governance tools and people). Research limitations/implications-Work in the area of managing privacy policies, risk assessment and mitigation management, as well as CRM, business alignment and business intelligence, could be greatly eased by using an ontology to properly define the concepts involved in the area. Practical implications-Ontologies can facilitate the interoperability among different security tools, creating a unique way to represent security data and allow the security data from any security tool (for instance, Snort) to be mapped into an ontology, such as the security incident one described in the paper. An example showing how the two ontologies could be plugged into a high level decision-making system is described at the end. Originality/value-Although several previous papers examined the value of using ontologies to represent security information, this one looks at their properties for a possible integrated use of management and governance tools. Adapted from the source document.
Information Processing and Management
A review of ontology based query expansion.
Bhogal, J.; Macfarlane, A.; Smith, P.
Query expansion; Ontology; Context
This paper examines the meaning of context in relation to ontology based query expansion and contains a review of query expansion approaches. The various query expansion approaches include relevance feedback, corpus dependent knowledge models and corpus independent knowledge models. Case studies detailing query expansion using domain-specific and domain-independent ontologies are also included. The penultimate section attempts to synthesise the information obtained from the review and provide success factors in using an ontology for query expansion. Finally the area of further research in applying context from an ontology to query expansion within a newswire domain is described. (Author abstract)
Schema and constraints-based matching and merging of Topic Maps.
Kim, Jung-Mn; Shin, Hyopil; Kim, Hyoung-Joo
Matching; Merging; Ontology; Semantic relations
In this paper, we propose a multi-strategic matching and merging approach to find correspondences between ontologies based on the syntactic or semantic characteristics and constraints of the Topic Maps. Our multi-strategic matching approach consists of a linguistic module and a Topic Map constraints-based module. A linguistic module computes similarities between concepts using morphological analysis, string normalization and tokenization and language-dependent heuristics. A Topic Map constraints-based module takes advantage of several Topic Maps-dependent techniques such as a topic property-based matching, a hierarchy-based matching, and an association-based matching. This is a composite matching procedure and need not generate a cross-pair of all topics from the ontologies because unmatched pairs of topics can be removed by characteristics and constraints of the Topic Maps. Merging between Topic Maps follows the matching operations. We set up the MERGE function to integrate two Topic Maps into a new Topic Map, which satisfies such merge requirements as entity preservation, property preservation, relation preservation, and conflict resolution. For our experiments, we used oriental philosophy ontologies, western philosophy ontologies, Yahoo western philosophy dictionary, and Wikipedia philosophy ontology as input ontologies. Our experiments show that the automatically generated matching results conform to the outputs generated manually by domain experts and can be of great benefit to the following merging operations. (Author abstract)
Decisions in thesaurus construction and use.
Losee, Robert M.
Thesauri; Term selection; Ontologies
A thesaurus and an ontology provide a set of structured terms, phrases, and metadata, often in a hierarchical arrangement, that may be used to index, search, and mine documents. We describe the decisions that should be made when including a term, deciding whether a term should be subdivided into its subclasses, or determining which of more than one set of possible subclasses should be used. Based on retrospective measurements or estimates of future performance when using thesaurus terms in document ordering, decisions are made so as to maximize performance. These decisions may be used in the automatic construction of a thesaurus. The evaluation of an existing thesaurus is described, consistent with the decision criteria developed here. These kinds of user-focused decision-theoretic techniques may be applied to other hierarchical applications, such as faceted classification systems used in information architecture or the use of hierarchical terms in “breadcrumb navigation”. (Author abstract)
2008, v. 44, n. 2
Teachers’ perspectives and contextual dimensions to guide the design of N.C. history learning objects and ontology.
Pattuelli, Maria Cristina
Descriptors: Information seeking behaviour; Digital libraries; Learning materials; Ontologies; Teachers
This paper describes an ongoing research project that involves the study of teachers’ information seeking behaviors, needs and practices in relation to a collection of primary source materials available through the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) Library’s digital library Documenting the American South (DocSouth). By gaining an in-depth understanding of the needs and wants of teachers in the context of their work, we hope to build a collection of learning objects and a domain ontology applied to the collection to improve teachers’ access to the cultural heritage materials and to facilitate their actual use in the classroom. Adapted from the source document.
Gene Ontology Annotation as Text Categorization: An Empirical Study
Seki, Kazuhiro; Mostafa, Javed
Text categorization; Online information retrieval
Gene ontology (GO) consists of three structured controlled vocabularies, i.e., GO domains, developed for describing attributes of gene products, and its annotation is crucial to provide a common gateway to access different model organism database. This paper explores an effective application of text categorization methods to this highly practical problem in biology. As a first step, we attempt to tackle the automatic GO annotation task posed in the Text Retrieval Conference (TREC) 2004 Genomics Track. Given a pair of genes and an article reference where the genes appear, the task simulates assigning GO domain codes. We approach the problem with careful consideration of the specialized terminology and pay special attention to various forms of gene synonyms, so as to exhaustively locate the occurrences of the target gene. We extract the words around the spotted gene occurrences and used them to represent the gene for GO domain code annotation. We regard the task as a text categorization problem and adopt a variant of kNN with supervised term weighting schemes, making our method among the top-performing systems in the TREC official evaluation. Furthermore, we investigate different feature selection policies in conjunction with the treatment of terms associated with negative instances. Our experiments reveal that round-robin feature space allocation with eliminating negative terms substantially improves performance as GO terms become specific. Adapted from the source document.
2007, v. 12, n. 2
A naive ontology for concepts of time and space for searching and learning.
Miwa, Makiko; Kando, Noriko
Searching; Ontology; Learning; User interface; Multimedia
Introduction. In this paper, we propose a new approach for developing naive ontology as the basis for optimal information access interfaces for multimedia digital documents intended for novice users. Method. We try to elicit the knowledge structure of domain novices and patterns of its modification in their searching and learning processes by eye-tracker and showing eye-movements in the post-search interviews. Analysis. Recorded interview data were fully transcribed and coded using Atlas.ti and analysed following a bottom-up strategy of the constant-comparative technique. Results. We developed a taxonomy of knowledge modification which includes (1) adding, (2) connecting, (3) limiting, (4) relating, (5) specifying and (6) transforming. Conclusion. The taxonomy may be expanded and elaborated as the project progress and findings are expected to be incorporated into the design of the naive ontology. The study results provided theoretical implications on knowledge building, methodological implications on data collection using eye-tracker and showing eye-movements in the post-search interviews and useful information on the design of information access interface for novices users. (Author abstract)
2006, v. 12, n. 3
Ontology-driven knowledge management systems for digital libraries: towards creating semantic metadata-based information services.
Angrosh, M. L.; Urs, Shalini R.
Knowledge management; Digital libraries; Institutional repositories; Metadata; Semantic relations; Ontologies
Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS), are essential prerequisites for efficiently managing the rapidly increasing digital data repositories, besides their being vital components of digital libraries. However, various inadequacies associated with traditional digital content management mechanisms in achieving the required degree of control and freedom over digital data has hindered the information community in obtaining optimal benefits from available digital resources. Knowledge representation is at the heart of the entire system and has crucial significance for its contribution in organizing and managing digital information. While “dictionaries”, the initial mode of knowledge representation lacked the primary binding relationships between terms and corresponding definitions, “thesaurus”, the next immediate form of knowledge representation could only add synonyms and antonyms to the existing collection of terms and definitions without addressing the problem of relationships. Other forms of knowledge representation, such as, taxonomies brought in the required etymological information, by providing for hierarchical arrangement of synonyms and antonyms. While taxonomies have the ability in creating a tree structure of entities and in deriving association relations between classes, such techniques have limitations in providing the required degree of relatedness. Currently, ontologies, applied in knowledge representation, attempt to bridge existing gaps, primarily by providing for higher degrees of associative relationships between concepts could pave the way for designing semantic web-based information services. During the last few years, metadata (data about data) has played a significant role in information management systems. The primary objective of metadata has been to facilitate an end-user in finding the required piece of information. However, the absence of contextual relevance in these data sets has resulted in questioning the value of metadata in content management. The presence of contextual information in metadata, pertinent to digital content being captured can aid to a large extent in designing effective information services. Knowledge representation systems such as ontologies can be utilized for representing domain specific knowledge characteristics, which could be utilized for deriving “semantic metadata”, i.e. those forms of metadata that capture contextually relevant information about digital content. Such contextually relevant metadata that would form valuable knowledge structures can be exploited for retrieving actionable information. The present paper intends to draw upon the value of semantic metadata derived through a domain specific ontology, which would be tapped by information retrieval mechanisms, to provide search strategies to yield higher precision rates. The paper draws upon the development of an agri-pest domain specific ontology for modeling the agriculture-pest-disease-pesticide domain specific knowledge, which would be utilized for mapping content related data with domain knowledge. The resulting knowledge base will be used for information retrieval through contextually relevant entry points. (Author abstract)
2006, v. 12, n. 4
Ontologies as knowledge structures for semantic retrieval.
Madalli, Devika P.
Ontologies; Semantic web
Internet is today a research tool often accessed to find resources corresponding to information needs. More often that not, in a typical search scenario on Internet, the appropriate resource is only retrieved as an answer to some other query at some other instance. This situation highlights the need for organization of information on the web to facilitate better retrieval. Semantic web techniques promise meaningful retrieval of resources in answer to a query. Ontologies aid mapping of concepts into knowledge structures in specific domains that provide context to the retrieved set. This paper discusses the role of Ontologies in semantic retrieval. (Author abstract)
2007, v. 13, n. 1
Ontological categories and semantic relationships (semantic relationships in knowledge organization – update 2).
Neelameghan, A.
Lexicons; Ontologies; Transliteration; Thesauri; Knowledge organization; India
Presents an update on ontological categories based on concepts, categories, meanings, and relationships derived from some of the sources used in building the corpus of terms for the bilingual thesaurus – the University of Madras Tamil Lexicon, 1926-1939, volumes 1-6, print edition and online version of the University of Chicago. This online version gives the descriptor terms in ASCII format as well as in Unicode compliant Tamil script. The transliteration of Tamil terms is that followed by the University of Cologne online searchable version of the Tamil Lexicon. (Quotes from original text)
2004, v. 29, n. 1
Ontology-based distributed autonomous knowledge systems
Dardzinska, Agnieszka; Ras, Zbigniew W
Computerized information storage and retrieval; Searching; Query formulation; Ontologies
Traditional query processing usually requires that users fully understand the database structure and content to issue a query. Due to the complexity of the database applications and the variety of user needs, the so-called global queries are introduced which traditional query answering systems cannot handle. Query posed to a database D is global if minimum one of its attributes is missing in D while it occurs in other databases. Definitions of a missing attribute in D can be extracted from other databases and shared with D. To handle semantic inconsistencies between the same attributes used at different sites, task ontologies are used as a communication bridge between them. These inconsistencies can be caused either by different granularity levels or by different interpretations of the same attribute. As the final outcome of this research, a rough query answering system based on distributed data mining is presented. (Original abstract)
2005, v. 30, n. 5
Using BWW model to evaluate building ontologies in CGs formalism
Colomb, Robert M; Kayed, Ahmad
Ontology; Information systems; Electronic commerce; Conceptual graphs; Modelling; Bunge-Wand-Weber model
The Bunge-Wand-Weber (BWW) representation model defines ontological constructs for information systems. According to these constructs the completeness and efficiency of a modeling technique can be defined. Ontology plays an essential role in e-commerce. Using or updating an existing ontology and providing tools to solve any semantic conflicts become essential steps before putting a system online. We use conceptual graphs (CGs) to implement ontologies. This paper evaluates CG capabilities using the BWW representation model. It finds out that CGs are ontologically complete according to Wand and Weber definition. Also it finds out that CGs have construct overload and construct redundancy which can undermine the ontological clarity of CGs. This leads us to build a meta-model to avoid some ontological-unclarity problems. We use some of the BWW constructs to build the meta-model. (Original abstract)
2005, v. 30, n. 7
On the query refinement in the ontology-based searching for information
Stojanovic, Nenad
Searching; Query formulation; Ontologies
One of the main problems in the (web) information retrieval is the ambiguity of users’ queries, since they tend to post very short queries which do not express their information need clearly. This seems to be valid for the ontology-based information retrieval in which the domain ontology is used as the backbone of the searching process. In this paper, we present a novel approach for determining possible refinements of an ontology-based query. The approach is based on measuring the ambiguity of a query with respect to the original user’s information need. We defined several types of the ambiguities concerning the structure of the underlying ontology and the content of the information repository. These ambiguities are interpreted regarding the user’s information need, which we infer from the user’s behaviour in searching process. Finally, the ranked list of the potentially useful refinements of her query is provided to the user. We present a small evaluation study that shows the advantages of the proposed approach. (Original abstract)
2006, v. 31, n. 4/5
Ontology-based methodology for e-service discovery.
Bianchini, Devis; De Antonellis, Valeria; Pernici, Barbara; Plebani, Pierluigi
Online information storage and retrieval; Computer methodologies; Search strategies; Publication output; Classification; Ontologies
Service discovery is a critical aspect in the Service Oriented Computing approach. A model, a methodology and a tool environment based on ontologies are proposed in this paper. The requester and provider perspectives are discussed, both to support the service publication phase and the search phase. The proposed service ontology is based on functional aspects and it is organized on three layers, to support traditional search based on classification such as proposed in UDDI as well as search based on abstracting service characteristics. In addition, nonfunctional features such as requester and provider contexts and quality of service are considered to refine the search results according to the requester requirements. (Author abstract)
CILIOS: connectionist inductive learning and inter-ontology similarities for recommending information agents.
Rosaci, D.
Intelligent agents; Ontology; Learning
For a software information agent, operating on behalf of a human owner and belonging to a community of agents, the choice of communicating or not with another agent becomes a decision to take, since communication generally implies a cost. Since these agents often operate as recommender systems, on the basis of dynamic recognition of their human owners’ behaviour and by generally using hybrid machine learning techniques, three main necessities arise in their design, namely (i) providing the agent with an internal representation of both interests and behaviour of its owner, usually called ontology; (ii) detecting inter-ontology properties that can help an agent to choose the most promising agents to be contacted for knowledge-sharing purposes; (iii) semi-automatically constructing the agent ontology, by simply observing the behaviour of the user supported by the agent, leaving to the user only the task of defining concepts and categories of interest. We present a complete MAS architecture, called connectionist learning and inter-ontology similarities (CILIOS), for supporting agent mutual monitoring, trying to cover all the issues above. CILIOS exploits an ontology model able to represent concepts, concept collections, functions and causal implications among events in a multi-agent environment; moreover, it uses a mechanism capable of inducing logical rules representing agent behaviour in the ontology by means of a connectionist ontology representation, based on neural-symbolic networks, i.e., networks whose input and output nodes are associated with logic variables. (Author abstract)
Interoperation among agent-based information systems through a communication acts ontology
Bermudez, Jesus; Goni, Alfredo; Illarramendi, Arantza; Bagues, Miren I.
Information systems; Interoperability; Semantic web
Information technology is evolving from focusing on local systems to encompassing a more global interaction among multiple systems in enterprises and communities. On the one hand, new advances in the area of network communications have facilitated in some way the intercommunication among heterogeneous information systems located at different places. However, what is still missing is the possibility of a real and efficient interoperation among those systems in an open environment as the one favoured by Internet. On the other hand, agent technology provides platforms where cooperative work of information systems is concernable because of the software agents working on behalf of these information systems. But, nowadays that cooperation is in general restricted and requires a laborious a priori preparation. In this paper we present the features of a formal ontology that can play a relevant role in the development of a new kind of information systems interoperation frameworks. The ontology includes classes and properties for describing communication acts among agents. We claim that the communication acts ontology provides interoperability support due to the recognition of communication acts from one Agent Communication Language (ACL) as instances of communication acts in another ACL. Sometimes the comprehension will not be complete, but partial comprehension of the communication may be useful and preferable to the “not understood” answer given nowadays. Terms of the ontology are described as classes or properties using the Web Ontology Language OWL. Adapted from the source document.
2006, v. 5, n. 4
The HotBox: a visual user interface to medical data.
Ward, Richard C.; Pouchard, Line C.; Beckerman, Barbara G.; Dickson, Stewart P.
User interface; Visualization; Medical informatics; Ontologies; HotBox; Oak Ridge National Laboratory
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Virtual Soldier Project recently investigated methods to predict outcomes from penetrating wounds based on comparison of complex mathematical models and clinical data including baseline X-ray computed tomography and post-wound imaging. A need of the project was to correlate three-dimensional anatomy to extensive information, including pathophysiology of the wounded soldier, using the anatomical geometry as an interface. To address this need, Oak Ridge National Laboratory developed the HotBox, a user interface that links a given point in space (a voxel) to the structural knowledge ontology describing the anatomy at that location. In addition, the HotBox links the location to the individual’s physiological state (vital signs) and a description of the wound. The implementation and use of the HotBox is explained and the implications for the future of medical records, pre-surgical planning, image-guided surgery, and post-surgical treatment and rehabilitation are discussed. (Author abstract)
Information: Wissenschaft & Praxis
2004, v. 55, n. 3
Ene Lehrbeispiec fur eine Ontologie: OpenCyc. Teaching ontologies: the example of OpenCyc
Fischer, Dietrich H
Knowledge representation; Ontologies; OpenCyc
An introduction to OpenCyc, a prototype of a logic-based knowledge representation system, and the content of its updateable knowledge base, as a universal upper ontology. The knowledge representation language of OpenCyc, called CycL, competes with OWL, which is designed to be used for the semantic Web and has been standardized by the World Wide Web Consortium. (Original abstract)
2005, v. 56, n. 5/6
Semantische Suche in einer Hochschulontologie. Semantic search on top of university world ontology
Knorz, Gerhard; Rein, Birgit
Computerized information retrieval; Searching; Ontologies; Universities; Germany; Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences
Ontologies aim to provide present day retrieval quality by means of their semantic foundations. Introduces an ontology developed and used by the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, which covers “the university world”, both broadly and also at a very detailed level. Describes its attributes and structure, the software used (K-Infinity), and how its features are used to build a powerful semantic search tool for documents and other information (eg persons, meetings, projects etc.) within the University. Original article in German. (Original abstract)
2006, v. 57, n. 5
Informationsbezug zwischen Gemein- und Fachsprache: zum gemein- und fachsprachlichen Wort “Tal”. [Relations between standard language and technical language: the German term “Tal” as an example.]
Gerstenkorn, Alfred
Thesauri; Terminology; Ontologies
Documentation languages use terminologies and ontologies. Terminologies include a great number of expressions which are also used in common language. Are these expressions more or less exactly defined, or are they ambiguous, polysemes? The German word “Tal” (valley) is used to exemplify this question and to illustrate methods for the construction of ontologies for documentation purposes. Original article in German. (Author abstract)
2006, v. 57, n. 6/7
Wissen gewinnen durch Wissen: Ontologiebasierte Informationsextraktion. [The use of ontologies for information extraction.]
Endres-Niggmeyer, Brigitte; Jauris-Heipke, Sigrid; Pinsky, Manuela; Ullbricht, Ulrike
Automatic abstracting; Text analysis; Ontologies; Medicine
Discusses the use of ontology in the production of automatic summaries in databases, drawing experience from a real life application in the bone marrow transplant (BMT) information system SummIT-BMT. The idea is that human summary users can comprehend and integrate automatic summaries more easily if they and the automatic summarizer share summarization principles and practices. A domain ontology in a MySQL database provides knowledge for human users and system components. The discussion concentrates on the ontology and its use for information extraction and question answering/summarization. Original article in German. (Author abstract – amended)
Lernen von Ontologien aus Texten: Stand durch Technik, Anwendungen, Herausforderungen und Trends. [Ontologies on demand: a description of the state of the art applications, challenges and trends for ontology learning from text.]
Cimiano, Phillipp; Volker, Johanna; Studer, Rudi
Knowledge representation; Ontologies; Semantic relations
Describes the concept and various applications for ontologies, noting that as the cost of producing them is high, various proposals have emerged for learning ontologies from structured and unstructured resources. Focuses on the maturity of techniques used for learning ontologies from textual resources, and considers whether ontologies could be produced “on demand”. (Text of article in English). (Author abstract – amended)
Wissensaustausch mit semantikbasierten Peer-to-Peer Systemen. [Knowledge exchange in semantic based peer-to-peer systems.]
Haase, Peter; Tempich, Christoph
Information communication; Networks; Peer to peer; Ontologies; Semantic relations; Bibster
Discusses approaches to support the exchange of semantic knowledge structures in peer to peer systems. In such systems, the knowledge sharing by the peers is described using ontology. The semantic knowledge structures can be used to effectively distribute queries within the network and to cluster peers with similar interests. Presents an algorithm for the effective routing of queries in self organizing peer to peer systems which combines proactively sent advertisements and passively collected knowledge about remote peers to build local indices of knowledge available on the network. The approach has been implemented and evaluated in Bibster, a peer to peer system for the exchange of bibliographic data. Oiginal article in German. (Author abstract)
Uberblick uber aktuelle Programme zur Erschaffung von Ontologien. [Software tools for building ontologies: a survey.]
Guldner, Dirk; Keil, Sonja; Wich, Matthias
Online information retrieval; Ontologies; Software; Semantic web
The influence of the semantic web has led to more interest in the use of ontologies. After a short general introduction to the process of building ontologies, presents a survey of several software tools designed for this purpose. Original article in German. (Author abstract)
Ontologien fur die Informationsintegration in Geschaftsanwedungen. [Information integration in business applications by support of ontologies.]
Leidig, Torsten
Knowledge management; Business information; Ontologies; Semantic relations
Describes current semantic annotation which is mainly carried out manually, and based on manually designed ontologies. The aim is to structure and filter knowledge according to the work context. The problems of scaling up such a process means that the success of knowledge and information integration in business applications will depend heavily on technology in the future for the design of knowledge structures. Original article in German. (Author abstract)
2007, v. 58, n. 5
Empfehlungssysteme aus informationswissenschaftlicher Sicht – State of the Art. / Recommender systems in on information science view – the state of the art.
Hohfeld, Stefanie; Kwiatkowski, Melanie
Electronic information services; Ontologies; Knowledge representation
Recommender systems offer content individually to users in the WWW, based on their concrete needs, preferences and interests. Those systems can propose products, services, users (with analogous interests, etc.) and represent a special form of personalisation as well as of social networking – exactly in the Web 2.0 age. Recommender systems offer e.g. suppliers in the e-commerce a crucial market advantage. So, the evaluation of the customer data has high priority at big companies like Amazon, Google or Ebay. For this reason we engaged in recommender systems, which take up the user’s needs in different ways, to ‘anticipate’ needs and make suggestions (from different areas) to the user. This review article achieves a definition and representation of operations and methods of recommender systems. Exactly the different methodologies of those services should be expounded comparatively on that occasion in order to represent advantages and disadvantages. The use of ontologies and folksonomies as implementations in recommender systems is portrayed in order to be able to take into consideration chances and risks of the application of knowledge representation methods for future researches. Adapted from the source document.
Ontoverse: collaborative ontology engineering for the life sciences.
Mainz, Indra; Weller, Katrin; Paulsen, Ingo; Mainz, Dominic; Kohl, Jochen; von Haeseler, Arndt
Ontology; Life sciences; Knowledge representation
We introduce ontologies as a new method for detailed and formalized knowledge representation, with particular focus on their use for the life sciences. Furthermore, we demonstrate the need for collaborative approaches in constructing elaborated scientific ontologies. The Ontoverse ontology wiki is presented as one tool to support all phases of collaborative ontology engineering. Adapted from the source document.
Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations in knowledge organization systems.
Peters, Isabella; Weller, Katrin
Knowledge representation; Ontology; Controlled vocabulary; Collaboration
Classical knowledge representation methods have been successfully working for years with established – but in a way restricted and vague – relations such as synonymy, hierarchy (meronymy, hyponymy) and unspecified associations. Recent developments like ontologies and folksonomies show new forms of collaboration, indexing and knowledge representation and encourage the reconsideration of standard knowledge relationships for practical use. In a summarizing overview we show which relations are currently used in knowledge organization systems (controlled vocabularies, ontologies and folksonomies) and which relations are expressed explicitly or which may be inherently hidden in them. Adapted from the source document.
Intelligent Information Systems
2007, v. 3, n. 1
Ontological foundations for active information systems.
March, Salvatore T.; Allen, Gove N.
Information systems; Intelligent agents; Ontology
While passive information systems simply record and report on the observed slates of things in the world, active information systems participate in the determination and ascription of state to things. They infer conclusions based on the application of rules that govern how things in the real world are affected when defined and identified events occur. The ontological foundations for active information systems must include constructs to represent such causal rules. Conceptualizing things and events as distinct ontological categories with existence and properties and representing them as entities at the conceptual level is sufficient for this purpose. The properties of an event include data values inherent in the event and rules that define how the states of affected things are changed when the event occurs. In this manner the slate-history of a thing is represented by the sequence of events that have affected it. Future states of a thing can be predicted based on proposed or conjectured events. Such a conceptualization enables a parsimonious mapping between an active information system and the real world system it is intended to model. (Author abstract)
2004, v. 16, n. 3
Justification of the need for an ontology for accessibility requirements (Theoretic framework)
Burrell, P; Masuwa-Morgan, K R
Computers; User interface; Human-computer interaction; Ontologies; Access to information
The aim of this paper is to make a case generally for an ontology for accessibility requirements specification. Requirements specification is generally intended to provide clear, testable descriptions of what a system should do. What an ontology would do is to act like a requirements bank that provides methodology independent accessibility requirements that could then be used to extrapolate, on demand, conceptual models for a variety of implementations driven by a variety of methodologies. The effect of this would be to minimise requirements specification, ensure declarativity, standardisation, interoperability and reusability, whilst at the same time lending greater migratability from specification to design. There has been much worldwide action in developing guidelines, tools and methods in an attempt to ensure that technologies and information systems are accessible. There is, however, a growing need to partner these initiatives more closely with software engineering traditions. An ontology for accessibility requirements would provide formal semantic specifications beyond the syntactic provisions rendered by commonly used formal specification languages. (Original abstract)
2005, v. 17, n. 3
Semiotic engineering: bringing designers and users together at interaction time
de Souza, Clarisse Sieckenius
Software engineering; Semiotics; Human-computer interaction; Theories; Ontology; Epistemology
Semiotic engineering is a semiotic theory of human-computer interaction, where interactive computer systems are viewed as one-shot messages sent from designers to users. Through the system’s interface, in many direct and indirect ways, designers are telling the users how they can, should, or must interact with the system in order to achieve a particular range of goals anticipated at design time. Designers are thus active interlocutors at human-computer interaction time. Their interactive discourse is delivered implicitly and/or explicitly by the system, which constitutes the designer’s deputy. The importance of bringing designers and users together at interaction time springs from the intellectual nature of software artifacts. They are the result of human reasoning, choice and decision, rather than the direct effect of universal or natural laws. An adequate understanding of interactive artifacts depends on apprehending and comprehending the human intellect in action. Hence, in addition to producing interactive artifacts, designers must also introduce them appropriately, as is the case of other intellectual products. In this paper, we show how semiotic engineering can provide substantial theoretic support for viewing and exploring design possibilities brought about by this shift in perspective. We also discuss ontological and epistemological aspects of the theory, and conclude that it can bridge some of the gaps between other fragmented HCI theories and approaches. (Original abstract)
International Journal of Data Warehousing and Mining
Medical document clustering using ontology-based term similarity measures.
Zhang, Xiaodan; Jing, Liping; Hu, Xiaohua; Ng, Michael; Xia, Jiali; Zhou, Xiaohua
Data warehouses; Clustering; Decision support systems; Ontology
Recent research shows that ontology as background knowledge can improve document clustering quality with its concept hierarchy knowledge. Previous studies take term semantic similarity as an important measure to incorporate domain knowledge into clustering process such as clustering initialization and term re-weighting. However, not many studies have been focused on how different types of term similarity measures affect the clustering performance for a certain domain. In this article, we conduct a comparative study on how different term semantic similarity measures including path-based, information-content-based and feature-based similarity measure affect document clustering. Term re-weighting of document vector is an important method to integrate domain ontology to clustering process. In detail, the weight of a term is augmented by the weights of its co-occurred concepts. Spherical k-means are used for evaluate document vector re-weighting on two real-world datasets: Disease10 and OHSUMED23. Experimental results on nine different semantic measures have shown that: (1) there is no certain type of similarity measures that significantly outperforms the others; (2) Several similarity measures have rather more stable performance than the others; (3) term re-weighting has positive effects on medical document clustering, but might not be significant when documents are short of terms. Adapted from the source document.
International Journal of Distance Education Technologies
2005, v. 3, n. 1
Using ontology as scaffolding for authoring teaching materials
Chen, Nian Shing; Lee, Chin Chin; Shih, Timothy K; Tsai, Chun Yen; Yang, Jin Tan David; Yu, Pao Ta
Education; Distance learning; Learning materials; Visual materials; Controlled vocabulary; Semantic relations; Mathematics; Secondary schools; Taiwan
This article introduces mathematics ontology as a means of supporting teachers for authoring teaching materials. The purpose of this study is to conduct teachers to author a teaching material by using visualized domain ontology as scaffolding on a Content Repository Management System (CRMS). Although the domain ontology of mathematics at the secondary school level in Taiwan provides structured vocabularies for describing domain content, for those teachers who want to create a knowledge-rich description of domain knowledge, such as required by the semantic Web, using ontology turns out to provide only part of the knowledge required. In the article, we examine problems related to capturing the learning resources or Learning Objects (LOs) on the CRMS. To construct ontology for a subset of mathematics course descriptions, the representation requirements by Resource Description Framework/Resource Description Framework Schema (RDF/RDFS) was implemented. Furthermore, a Visualized Online Authoring Tool (VOAT) is designed for authoring teaching materials on the Web. Finally, discussion and future research are addressed. (Original abstract)
2005, v. 3, n. 2
On the convergence of formal ontologies and standardized E-learning
Sicilia, Miguel-Angel
Education; Distance learning; Controlled vocabulary; Ontologies; Metadata; Learning materials; Standards; Interoperability; Semantics
Current efforts to standardize e-learning resources are centered on the notion of a learning object as a piece of content that can be reused in diverse educational contexts. Several specifications for the description of learning objects – converging in the LOM standard – have appeared in recent years, providing a common foundation for interoperability and shared semantics. At the same time, the Semantic Web vision has resulted in a number of technologies grounded in the availability of shared, consensual knowledge representations called ontologies. As proposed by several authors, ontologies can be used to provide a richer, logics-based framework for the expression of learning object metadata, resulting in the convergence of both streams of research towards a common objective. In this article, we address the practicalities of the representation of LOM metadata instances into formal ontologies, discussing the main technical and organizational issues that must be addressed for an effective integration of both technologies, and sketching some illustrative examples using modern ontology languages and a large knowledge base. (Original abstract)
2007, v. 5, n. 1
An Ontology Infrastructure for an E-Learning Scenario.
Guo, W. Y.; Chen, D. R.
Education; Teaching; Educational technology; Computer assisted instruction; Students; Distance learning; World Wide Web; Semantic web
Selecting appropriate learning services for a learner from a large number of heterogeneous knowledge sources is a complex and challenging task. This article illustrates and discusses how Semantic Web technologies such as RDF and ontology can be applied to e-learning systems to help the learner in selecting an appropriate learning course or retrieving relevant information. It presents the main features of an e-learning scenario and the ontology on which it is based, then illustrates the scenario ontology with the training domain and the application domain. Finally, it presents semantic querying and semantic. (Author abstract)
International Journal of Electronic Government Research
Ontological mediation for multi-agent systems.
Rahimi, Shahram; Rana, Pravab J.; Ahmad, Raheel; Gupta, Bidyut
Intelligent systems; Classification of knowledge; Ontology
A major performance factor when gathering information across a platform like the World Wide Web is the efficiency of the search and retrieval system. The effectiveness of current search and retrieval systems is restricted as they do not use the semantics of the data but only utilize keywords. Using a multi-agent system where agents gather information and organize it, creating ontologies, is a very viable approach to the problem. Major difficulties that arise during collaboration among such information-providing agents are ambiguity and data misinterpretation. This is due to the diversity of ontology creators, differences in linguistics, and ontological overlapping. Users may also knowingly or unknowingly add incorrect information to ontologies. Ontological mediation tries to address such collaboration issues relating to ambiguous and unfamiliar information arising due to various reasons. We propose a communication-based approach for ontological mediation. In the process, we also present a classification model for ontological mediation. Adapted from the source document.
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies
2004, v. 60, n. 1
Learning ontologies from natural language texts
Barforoush, Ahmad Abdollahzadeh; Shamsfard, Mehrnoush
Computerized information storage and retrieval; User interface; Human-computer interaction; Natural language processing; Ontology
Research on ontology is becoming increasingly widespread in the computer science community. The major problems in building ontologies are the bottleneck of knowledge acquisition and time-consuming construction of various ontologies for various domains/applications. Meanwhile moving toward automation of ontology construction is a solution. We proposed an automatic ontology building approach. In this approach, the system starts from a small ontology kernel and constructs the ontology through text understanding automatically. The kernel contains the primitive concepts, relations and operators to build an ontology. The features of our proposed model are being domain/application independent, building ontologies upon a small primary kernel, learning words, concepts, taxonomic and non-taxonomic relations and axioms and applying a symbolic, hybrid ontology learning approach consisting of logical, linguistic based, template driven and semantic analysis methods. Hasti is an ongoing project to implement and test the automatic ontology building approach. It extracts lexical and ontological knowledge from Persian (Farsi) texts. In this paper, at first, we will describe some ontology engineering problems, which motivated our approach. In the next sections, after a brief description of Hasti, its features and its architecture, we will discuss its components in detail. In each part, the learning algorithms will be described. Then some experimental results will be discussed and at last, we will have an overview of related works and will introduce a general framework to compare ontology learning systems and will compare Hasti with related works according to the framework. (Original abstract)
2005, v. 62, n. 5
Cognitive support for ontology modeling
Allen, Polly; Ernst, Neil A; Storey, Margaret-Anne
Computer applications; Expert systems; Knowledge representation; Ontologies; User interface; Human-computer interaction
Knowledge engineering tools are becoming ever more complex, and therefore increased cognitive support will be necessary to leverage the potential of those tools. Our paper motivates this claim by examining some previous work in this domain and explaining the nature of cognitive support. We discuss some of the problem areas we have encountered in our research. Through user questionnaires and observations carried out at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the University of Washington Foundational Model of Anatomy (FMA) Project, we have begun to gain an understanding of the cognitive barriers experienced by the users of knowledge engineering tools. We present some proposed solutions that could address the problems we identified, and in addition, discuss how our own tool, called Jambalaya, could be applied to provide cognitive support. We analyse the support Jambalaya provides using some non-functional design criteria and illustrate some trade-offs inherent in tool design. We suggest that the need for cognitive support in knowledge engineering is immediate and essential. (Original abstract)
Experiences in reusing knowledge sources using Protege and PROMPT
Martinez, D; Mira, J; Taboada, M
Computer applications; Expert systems; Knowledge representation; Ontologies; User interface; Human-computer interaction
We study the general question of how ontologies and reference terminologies can be used to make development of knowledge bases more manageable, taking into account the methodologies and tools available nowadays. For this, we have carried out a case study on designing a knowledge base oriented to support a diagnosis-aid application in ophthalmology. Ideally, starting from a pre-existing domain ontology, development of knowledge bases is centred only on collecting specific knowledge for a particular application. In practice, this is a very time-consuming approach, as ontology repositories do not usually provide many information-seeking facilities. In addition, it is unlikely to find an ontology that includes all the required knowledge. Consequently, design of knowledge bases requires the combination and adaptation of one or more source ontologies. In this work, particular attention is paid to the proper merging of two ontologies using the tool PROMPT. Our study emphasizes the advantages of using PROMPT for merging ontologies containing closely related portions of knowledge, as well as some proposals for improvement. In a second step, our approach extends the evolving ontology, with a new component that holds both a meta-model representing a very simplified structure of a terminology system into Protege-2000 and a set of constraints expressed using the Protege Axiom Language. This set of constraints allows us to check the consistency and coherence of the imported information. Defining meta-classes in Protege-2000 links this component to the rest of the models in the knowledge base. We report our experience in the reuse of several knowledge sources using Protege-2000 and several of the plug-ins. (Original abstract)
PROTEGE as a vehicle for developing medical terminological systems
Abu-Hanna, Ameen; Cornet, Ronald; Crubezy, Monica; de Keizer, Nicolette; Tu, Samson
Computer applications; Health care; Medicine; Expert systems; Knowledge representation; Ontologies; User interface; Human-computer interaction; PROTEGE
A medical terminological system (TS) is essentially an ontology consisting of concepts, attributes and relationships pertaining to medical terms. There are many TSs around today, most of which are essentially frame-based. Various efforts have been made to get a better understanding of the requirements and the conceptual and formal structures of TSs. However, the actual implementation of a TS consisted so far of ad hoc approaches starting from scratch and, due to ad hoc semantics of the representation, the interoperability with external applications of the knowledge represented is diminished. In recent years, protege has been gaining in popularity as a software environment for the development of knowledge-based systems. It provides an architecture for integrating frame-based ontologies with knowledge acquisition and other applications operating on these ontologies. In its recent version, protege provides the ability to specify meta-classes and -slots. This contributes to an explicit separability of knowledge levels and allows for an increased modeling flexibility. These properties, and the fact that it complies with a standard knowledge model, enable protege to be an attractive candidate for the implementation of frame-based TSs. This paper investigates how to specify a TS in protege and demonstrates this in a specific application in the domain of intensive care. Our approach is characterized by the utilization of a conceptual framework for understanding TSs and mapping its components onto protege constructs. This results in specifications of knowledge components for the implementation of terminological systems. The significance of our work stems from the generality of these specifications. This facilitates their reuse, leading to a principled process for the development of terminological systems for a broad spectrum of medical domains. (Original abstract)
GAS Ontology: an ontology for collaboration among ubiquitous computing devices
Christopoulou, Eleni; Kameas, Achilles
Computer applications; Expert systems; Knowledge representation; Ontologies; User interface; Human-computer interaction; GAS Ontology
The vision of ubiquitous computing is that the addition of computation and communication abilities to the artefacts that surround people will enable the users to set up their living spaces in a way that will serve them best minimising at the same time the required human intervention. The ontologies can help us to address some key issues of ubiquitous computing environments such as knowledge representation, semantic interoperability and service discovery. The GAS Ontology is an ontology that was developed in order to describe the semantics of the basic concepts of a ubiquitous computing environment and define their inter-relations. The basic goal of this ontology is to provide a common language for the communication and collaboration among the heterogeneous devices that constitute these environments. The GAS Ontology also supports the service discovery mechanism that a ubiquitous computing environment requires. In this paper, we present the GAS Ontology as well as the design challenges that we faced and the way that we handled them. In order to select the language and the tool that we used for the development of the GAS Ontology, we designed a prototype ontology and evaluated a number of languages and tools. The ontology development tool that proved to be the most suitable from this evaluation was Protege-2000. We also present how we use the GAS Ontology in our eGadgets project achieving semantic interoperability and service discovery. Finally, we present the GAS Ontology manager, which runs on each device, manages the device’s ontology and processes the knowledge that each device acquires over time. (Original abstract)
2006, v. 64, n. 1
The perceived utility of standard ontologies in document management for specialized domains
Kim, Mihye; Compton, Paul
Computerized records management; Document management systems; World Wide Web; User interface; Human-computer interaction
A user-based document management system has been developed for small communities on the Web. The system is based on the free annotation of documents by users. A number of annotation support tools are used to suggest possible annotations, including suggesting terms from external ontologies. This paper outlines some evaluation data on how users actually interact with the system in annotating their document especially on the use of standard ontologies. Results indicate that although an established external taxonomy can be useful in proposing annotation terms, users appear to be very selective in their use of the terms proposed and to have little interest in adhering to the particular hierarchical structure provided. (Original abstract)
2006, v. 64, n. 10
Supporting knowledge-intensive inspection tasks with application ontologies.
Koenderink, Nicole J. J. P.; Top, Jan L.; van Vliet, Lucas J.
Computers; User interface; Human-computer interaction; Vision processing; Ontologies
One of the major challenges in computer vision is to create automated systems that perform tasks with at least the same competences as human experts. In particular for automated inspection of natural objects this is not easy to achieve. The task is hampered by large in-class variations and complex 3D-morphology of the objects and subtle argumentations of experts. For example, in our horticultural case we deal with quality assessment of young tomato plants, which requires experienced specialists. We submit that automation of such a task employing an explicit model of the objects and their assessment is preferred over a black-box model obtained from modelling input-output relations only. We propose to employ ontologies for representing the geometrical shapes, object parts and quality classes associated with the explicit models. Our main contribution is the description of a method to develop a white-box computer vision application in which the needed expert knowledge is defined by: (i) decomposing the task of the inspection system into subtasks and (ii) identifying the algorithms that execute the subtasks. This method describes the interaction between the task decomposition and the needed task-specific knowledge, and studies the delicate balance between general domain knowledge and task-specific details. As a proof of principle of this methodology, we work through a horticultural case study and argue that the method leads to a robust, well-performing, and extendable computer vision system. (Author abstract)
2006, v. 64, n. 11
Modelling discourse in contested domains: a semiotic and cognitive framework.
Mancini, Clara; Shum, Simon J. Buckingham
Computers; User interface; Human-computer interaction; Semiotics; Ontologies; Cognitive aspects
This paper examines the representational requirements for interactive, collaborative systems intended to support sensemaking and argumentation over contested issues. We argue that a perspective supported by semiotic and cognitively oriented discourse analyses offers both theoretical insights and motivates representational requirements for the semantics of tools for contesting meaning. We introduce our semiotic approach, highlighting its implications for discourse representation, before describing a research system (ClaiMaker) designed to support the construction of scholarly argumentation by allowing analysts to publish and contest “claims” about scientific contributions. We show how ClaiMaker’s representational scheme is grounded in specific assumptions concerning the nature of explicit modelling, and the evolution of meaning within a discourse community. These characteristics allow the system to represent scholarly discourse as a dynamic process, in the form of continuously evolving structures. A cognitively oriented discourse analysis then shows how the use of a small set of cognitive relational primitives in the underlying ontology opens possibilities for offering users advanced forms of computational service for analysing collectively constructed argumentation networks. (Author abstract)
International Journal of Information Management
2005, v. 25, n. 1
Information content management with shared ontologies – at corporate research centre of EADS
Frank, Christian; Gardoni, Mickael
Information communication; Information management; Content management; Ontologies; Companies
The role of an industrial research centre is to elaborate and transfer new knowledge to the operational units. In this context, the researcher as an individual as well as acting in a team, needs a support for better management of information and knowledge during the work process. An analysis shows problems concerning the exploitation of individual practices, which are based on the management and the structuring of shared information by a collective. This analysis led to the elaboration of a general knowledge management model for an industrial research centre. For the development of this model we used the CIMOSA framework model. With the creation of the general knowledge management model for industrial research centres we have a framework for the analysis of needs and existing tools. The analysis framework supported the proposition of a new prototype called ANITA (ANnotation tool for Industrial TeAms) for better management and sharing of written information content for research teams. (Original abstract)
International Journal of Web Information Systems
Ontology based query expansion framework for use in medical information systems.
Wollersheim, D.; Rahayu, J. W.
Query expansion; Ontology; Medical informatics; Information systems
This paper presents a framework which combines data and text retrieval techniques to exercise and evaluate ontology based query expansions. We prepare by using linguistic techniques to identify query and document concepts, locating them in a ontologically defined semantic space. Expansions originate from the identified query concepts, with success determined by matching in the relevant document set. We identify three orthogonal dimensions that can affect query expansion success; relationship source, success measure technique, and query expansion technique. Expansion technique is further divided into six different categories: simple pruning, complex probability, voting, directional, semantic propagation, and multiple source concept. We describe each technique and show examples where they would be useful. The system architecture used facilitates plugging in of various expansion and evaluation routines, and flowing results from one method to the next. The system is useful for microanalysis of query expansion, discovering which components of ontological derived knowledge most influence query expansion success. In this work, we apply our framework to the medical domain. Adapted from the source document.
2008, v. 4, n. 2
Ontology mediated XML data translation
Yang, Kai; Lo, Amanda; Steele, Robert
XML; Ontology; Data analysis; Machine translation
Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to address problems that exist in the context of XML to ontology translation. Existing research results dealing with XML to ontology translation do not facilitate bidirectional data translation due to the fundamental differences between XML schema and ontologies. This paper proposes a mapping representation ontology for modeling concept mappings defined between XML schema and ontology, enabling data translation without any information loss. Design/methodology/approach-A two-step compensation approach is proposed that aims to prevent the loss of data type, structural and relational information during any single trip data translation. The mapping representation ontology proposed is capable in capturing enough information to compensate the loss of information during translation, hence allowing bidirectional conversions between XML and ontology. Findings-Fundamental differences between XML schema and ontology are identified as the main reason causing the loss of information during data translation. A compensation approach that captures a sufficient amount of concept mapping information data translation is found to be successful in enabling lossless data transformation. Practical implications-Outcomes from this work allow for the seamless data translation between XML documents, it demonstrates how web applications can seamlessly communicate and exchange data with each other without the need to conform to a predefined data standard. This paper aims to enhance interoperability between distributed systems. Originality/value-This paper presents a mapping ontology that captures concept mappings defined between XML schema and ontology. Two algorithms facilitating the bidirectional XML to ontology translation are also proposed. Adapted from the source document.
Adaptive ontology re-use: finding and re-using sub-ontologies
Stecher, Rodolfo; Niederee, Claudia; Nejdl, Wolfgang; Bouquet, Paolo
Ontology; Software; Knowledge management
Purpose-The discovery of the “right” ontology or ontology part is a central ingredient for effective ontology re-use. The purpose of this paper is to present an approach for supporting a form of adaptive re-use of sub-ontologies, where the ontologies are deeply integrated beyond pure referencing. Design/methodology/approach-Starting from an ontology draft which reflects the intended modeling perspective, the ontology engineer can be supported by suggesting similar already existing sub-ontologies and ways for integrating them with the existing draft ontology. This paper’s approach combines syntactic, linguistic, structural and logical methods into an innovative modeling-perspective aware solution for detecting matchings between concepts from different ontologies. This paper focuses on the discovery and matching phase of this re-use process. Findings-Owing to the combination of techniques presented in this general approach, the work described performs in the general case as well as approaches tailored for a specific usage scenario. Research limitations/implications-The methods used rely on lexical information obtained from the labels of the concepts and properties in the ontologies, which makes this approach appropriate in cases where this information is available. Also, this approach can handle some missing label information. Practical implications-Ontology engineering tasks can take advantage from the proposed adaptive re-use approach in order to re-use existing ontologies or parts of them without introducing inconsistencies in the resulting ontology. Originality/value-The adaptive re-use of ontologies by finding and partially re-using parts of existing ontological resources for building new ontologies is a new idea in the field, and the inclusion of the modeling perspective in the computation of the matches adds a new perspective that could also be exploited by other matching approaches. Adapted from the source document.
International Journal of Web Services Research
2005, v. 2, n. 2
Web services discovery with DAML-QoS ontology.
Zhou, Chen; Chia, Liang-Tien; Lee, Bu-Sung
World Wide Web; Web sites; Ontologies
As more and more Web services are deployed, Web service’s discovery mechanisms become essential. Similar services from different sources often exhibit quite different Quality of Service (QoS) levels. For service selection and management purpose, it is necessary to explicitly, precisely, and flexibly specify various constraints and QoS metrics for Web services descriptions. This paper provides a novel ontology as a complement to DARPA Agent Markup Language- Service (DAML-S) Ontology to provide a better QoS metrics model. Three layers are defined, together with clear role descriptions for development. Cardinality constraints are utilized to describe the QoS property constraints. A matchmaking algorithm with multiple matching degrees is provided accordingly. When incorporated with DAML-S, the multiple service level objectives can be described by assigning multiple QoS profiles to one service profile. A prototype system was developed, which demonstrates the feasibility for small to medium-sized service advertisement repository. (Author abstract)
2005, v. 2, n. 3
Discovery of web services in a multi-ontology and federated registry environment.
Oundhakar, Swapna; Verma, Kunal; Sivashanmugam, Kaarthik; Sheth, Amit; Miller, John
Online information retrieval; Online databases; Full text databases; Business information; World Wide Web; Searching; Ontologies; METEORS Web Service Discovery Infrastructure
The potential of a large-scale growth of private and semi-private registries is creating the need for an infrastructure that can support discovery and publication over a group of autonomous registries. Recent versions of UDDI have made changes to accommodate interactions between distributed registries. In this paper, we discuss an ontology-based Web service discovery infrastructure (METEORS Web Service Discovery Infrastructure), to provide access to registries that are divided based on business domains and grouped into federations. In addition, we discuss how Web service discovery is carried out within a federation. We provide a novel discovery algorithm, which addresses semantic heterogeneity with respect to multiple ontologies from the same domain. We also show through preliminary results of our empirical evaluation that even when services are annotated with different ontologies, our algorithm is able to find good matches and eliminate false matches by considering the context and the coverage information of the annotated concepts. (Author abstract)
Ontology and service oriented programming.
Li, Bing; Tsai, Wei-Tek
Online information retrieval; Online databases; Full text databases; Business information; World Wide Web; Searching; Ontologies
This paper presents a novel methodology to develop and integrate distributed applications. It starts from analyzing requirement specifications based on a service’s point of view. Thereafter, it is required to describe each service using ontology. The modeling and describing procedures are regarded as a new way to program Ontology and Service Oriented (OSO) programming, and descriptions obtained in the procedure are called OSO code. Moreover, OSO code has the features of interpretability, transformability, comparability, composability, and portability. Those features support code interpretation and generation. In addition, OSO code is also human-readable. This feature minimizes development efforts. Finally, since business logic in OSO code is represented in a machine-understandable format, the procedure of business process integration is completed automatically, based on business logic understanding. (Author abstract)
2006, v. 3, n. 2
An ontology-based content model for intelligent web content access services.
Yang, Stephen J. H.; Shao, Norman W. Y.
Online information retrieval; World Wide Web; Searching; Ontologies
Intelligent Web content access is a fundamental Web service, representing the first step toward semantic Web services. A lack of adequate and sufficient interpretation for content in current methods impedes access to content. This study regards Web content as any content described and published in the format of a markup language such as HTML or XML. In this paper, we will present our Content Model, combining subjective information from the content itself with objective information from people’s perceptions of this content, providing an integrated interpretation of a content item. During accessing, a search engine examines the description of a content item, as found in the Content Model, to find matching files. An ontology-based Content Model is developed and applied to the Web environment to enhance Web content accessibility. Results of this study demonstrate that the proposed Content Model provides essential content descriptions for locating, accessing, and interacting with content providers. (Author abstract)
2006, v. 3, n. 4
Metadata, ontologies, and information models for grid PSE toolkits based on web services.
Comito, Carmela; Mastoroianni, Carlo; Talia, Domenico
World Wide Web
A PSE toolkit is a group of technologies within a software architecture through which multiple PSEs can be built for different application domains. The effective use of a PSE toolkit requires the management of the heterogeneity of the involved resources that can include computers, data, network facilities, sensors, and software tools provided by different organizations. A distributed implementations of a PSE toolkit can be envisioned through the exploitation of features and functionalities offered by a service-oriented Grid framework, so obtaining a Grid PSE toolkit based on Web services. This paper presents a metadata model for Grid PSE toolkits based on Web services and the architecture of an information system that exploits the proposed metadata model. These two components contribute to define a general model of metadata management for supporting the design and implementation of problem solving environments on Grids. (Author abstract)
Internet Research: Electronic Networking Applications and Policy
2006, v. 16, n. 5
An ontology-based distributed whiteboard to determine legal responses to online cyber attacks.
Peng, Leisheng; Wijesekera, Duminda; Wingfield, Thomas C.; Michael, James B.
Computer security; World Wide Web; Computer crime; Law; Decision support systems; Ontologies
Purpose: This paper aims to assist investigators and attorneys addressing the legal aspects of cyber incidents, and allow them to determine the legality of a response to cyber attacks by using the Worldwide web securely. Design/methodology/approach: Develop a decision support legal whiteboard that graphically constructs legal arguments as a decision tree. The tree is constructed using a tree of questions and appending legal documents to substantiate the answers that are known to hold in anticipated legal challenges. Findings: The tool allows participating group of attorneys to meet in cyberspace in real time and construct a legal argument graphically by using a decision tree. They can construct sub-parts of the tree from their own legal domains. Because diverse legal domains use different nomenclatures, this tool provides the user the capability to index and search legal documents using a complex international legal ontology that goes beyond the traditional LexisNexis-like legal databases. This ontology itself can be created using the tool from distributed locations. Originality/value: This tool has been fine-tuned through numerous interviews with attorneys teaching and practicing in the area of cyber crime, cyber espionage, and military operations in cyberspace. It can be used to guide forensic experts and law enforcement personnel during their active responses and off-line examinations. (Author abstract)
2006, n. 42
Webs semantiques: les webs de segona generacio. [The semantic web: webs of the second generation.]
Romani, Mar
Online information storage and retrieval; World Wide Web; Semantic web; Ontologies
The article discusses the significance of the semantic web and describes what ontologies are and what uses are most frequent, with observations on both the current situation and future trends of intelligent webs. A comparison is offered of first and second generation webs. Finally, there is a discussion of the role that information professionals will play in the not so distant future. Original article in Catalan. (Author abstract)
Ontologies els reptes de les organitzacions. [Ontologies: challenges for organisations.]
Benjamins, V. Richard
Online information storage and retrieval; World Wide Web; Semantic web; Ontologies; Knowledge management
The semantic web has stimulated the creation of technology that allows adding meaning to content. One of the main application areas of semantic web technology today (2005/2006) is knowledge management, and in particular the treatment of unstructured information as if it were structured. Ontologies are key to any semantic web application; they can be considered as the “brains” of the application. In this paper, we discuss the challenges organisations face when constructing an ontology-based application as we – in iSOCO – have learned from concrete experiences with organisations. Original article in Catalan. (Author abstract)
Una aproximacio als llenguatges ‘documentals’ en la web semantica. [An approach to “bibliographic” languages on the semantic web.]
Jimenez, Antonio Garcia
Thesauri; Ontologies; Online information storage and retrieval; World Wide Web; Semantic web
The article begins by considering the current role of thesauri and then introduces the concept of ontologies and the advantages that they represent in comparison with thesauri for organising information. A description is provided of what the ontological domain signifies and of the conversion of thesauri to ontologies by the use of the SKOS-Core model, several experiences of which are provided: AGROVOC and the thesaurus of the National Cancer Institute. The article closes by presenting certain considerations concerning the interrelationship between both types of knowledge representation. Original article in Catalan. (Author abstract)
Journal of Agricultural & Food Information
2006, v. 7, n. 4
A practical comparison between thesaurus and ontology techniques as a basis for search improvement.
Kim, Soonho; Beck, Howard W.
Search strategies; Thesauri; Ontology; Knowledge representation; National Agricultural Library, USA
To compare the capabilities of a thesaurus and an ontology, we explored a number of differences between them, employing two specific examples: the National Agricultural Library Thesaurus (NALT) and a crop-pest ontology. For each, we compared the richness of representation of domain knowledge and the capacity for reasoning that could potentially lead to improved ability to retrieve documents, including agricultural publications. Fundamental differences of domain knowledge representation between them were then identified: Formality of language in the crop-pest ontology, logical consistency of concepts and relationships in the crop-pest ontology, and ambiguity of relationships among terms in the NALT. Relationships such as broader term (BT) and narrower term (NT) in the NALT could support a capacity for reasoning based on generalization and specialization, assuming the relationships themselves are valid. However, the crop-pest ontology supports the deduction of conclusions based on domain knowledge described in the ontology, the search for information resulting from logical inference, and the automated validation of logical consistency. We conclude that an ontology can provide a better representation of domain knowledge and more advanced power of reasoning based on the underlying knowledge representation, which could improve searching in agricultural publications. (Copies of this article are available for a fee from the Haworth Document Delivery Service, Haworth Press, Inc. E-Mail: getinfo@haworthpressinc.com, Web site http:/ /www.HaworthPress.com). (Author abstract)
Journal of Database Management
2004, v. 15, n. 2
ONTOMETRIC: a method to choose the appropriate ontology
Gomez-Perez, Asuncion; Lozano-Tello, Adolfo
Database management systems; Software; Ontologies; ONTOMETRIC
In the last years, the development of ontology-based applications has increased considerably, mainly related to the semantic web. Users currently looking for ontologies in order to incorporate them into their systems, just use their experience and intuition. This makes it difficult for them to justify their choices. Mainly, this is due to the lack of methods that help the user to determine which are the most appropriate ontologies for the new system. To solve this deficiency, the present work proposes a method, ONTOMETRIC, which allows the users to measure the suitability of existing ontologies, regarding the requirements of their systems. (Original abstract)
An ontology of data modelling languages: a study using a common-sense realistic ontology
Kazmierczak, Ed; Milton, Simon K
Database management systems; Software; Ontologies; Models
Data modelling languages are used in today’s information systems engineering environments. Many have a degree of hype surrounding their quality and applicability with narrow and specific justification often given in support of one over another. We want to more deeply understand the fundamental nature of data modelling languages. We thus propose a theory, based on ontology, that should allow us to understand, compare, evaluate, and strengthen data modelling languages. In this paper we present a method (conceptual evaluation) and its extension (conceptual comparison), as part of our theory. Our methods are largely independent of a specific ontology. We introduce Chisholm’s ontology and apply our methods to analyse some data modelling languages using it. We find a good degree of overlap between all of the data modelling languages analysed and the core concepts of Chisholm’s ontology, and conclude that the data modelling languages investigated reflect an ontology of commonsense-realism. (Original abstract)
An evaluation of inter-organizational workflow modeling formalisms
Aubert, Benoit A; Dussart, Aymeric; Patry, Michel
Database management systems; Software; Ontologies; Models; Bunge-Wand-Weber model
This paper evaluates the dynamic aspects of the UML in the context of inter-organizational workflows. Two evaluation methodologies are used. The first one is ontological and is based on the BWW (Bunge-Wand-Weber) models. The second validation is based on prototyping and consists of the development of a workflow management system in the aerospace industry. Both convergent and divergent results are found from the two validations. Possible enhancements to the UML formalism are suggested from the convergent results. On the other hand, the divergent results suggest the need for a contextual specification in the BWW models. (Original abstract)
Applying ontologies to business and systems modelling techniques and perspectives: lessons learned
Green, Peter; Rosemann, Michael
Database management systems; Software; Ontologies; Models; Bunge-Wand-Weber model; Systems analysis; Business
For many years in the area of business systems analysis and design, practitioners and researchers alike have been searching for some comprehensive basis on which to evaluate, compare, and engineer techniques that are promoted for use in the modelling of systems’ requirements. To date, while many frameworks, factors, and facets have been forthcoming, none appear to be based on a sound theory. In light of this dilemma, over the last 10 years, attention has been devoted by researchers to the use of ontology to provide some theoretical basis for the advancement of the business systems modelling discipline. This paper outlines how we have used a particular ontology for this purpose over the last five years. In particular, we have learned that the understandability and the applicability of the selected ontology must be clear for IS professionals, the results of any ontological evaluation must be tempered by economic efficiency considerations of the stakeholders involved, and ontologies may have to be focused for the business purpose and type of user involved in the modelling situation. (Original abstract)
2006, v. 17, n. 1
Ontology-supported Web service composition: an approach to service-oriented knowledge management in corporate services
Chen, Ye; Zhou, Lina; Zhang, Dongsong
Knowledge management; Business information; Finance; World Wide Web; Companies; Ontologies
Web service composition can enhance the efficiency and agility of knowledge management by composing individual Web services together for complex business requirements. There are two main research streams in knowledge representation for Web service composition: the syntactic-based approach and the semantic-based approach. Despite the promises brought by each approach, the two streams are largely separated from each other. In this article, we propose an integrated ontology-supported Web service composition framework, which provides a novel solution to organizational knowledge management. By synergistically leveraging both syntactic-based and semantic-based approaches, this framework provides dual modes to perform service composition. Ontologies are employed to enrich semantics at both the service description and composition levels. The proposed conceptual framework has been implemented in the corporate financial services domain. It is demonstrated that the shared ontology helps to fulfill automated and on-the-fly service composition in particular and knowledge management in general. (Original abstract)
Ontology for data mining and its application to mining incomplete data
Wang, Hai; Wang, Shouhong
Descriptors: Data mining; Ontologies; Knowledge management
Ontology has recently received considerable attention in the knowledge management community. This article discusses the needs of ontology development for data mining. Based on a domain analysis of knowledge representations in data mining, it proposes a generic structure of ontologies for data mining. Furthermore, this article specifies the unique ontology resources of the subdomain of innovative data mining with incomplete data. A project on an ontology-based data mining system for discovering knowledge from incomplete data demonstrates the effectiveness of ontology in knowledge management. Adapted from the source document.
Journal of Enterprise Information Management
2006, v. 19, n. 2
MUDPY ontology: a tool for multimedia project planning, design and development
Jakkilinki, R; Sharda, N; Ahmad, I
Multimedia; Evaluation; Performance measures; Ontologies; Multimedia design and planning pyramid
Purpose: This paper seeks to describe the process used to develop the multimedia design and planning pyramid (MUDPY) ontology, and the role played by the MUDPY ontology as a planning, design and development tool in multimedia projects. Design/methodology/approach: The MUDPY model was implemented for the semantic web by developing an ontology for it. This ontology facilitates defining the concepts existing in that domain, their attributes and the relationships between them. Findings: The MUDPY ontology can guide developers through the various phases of a multimedia project in a systematic fashion by allowing them to create a project proposal, specify the functional requirements, decide on the navigational structure and create a storyboard, and thus create high-quality projects. Research limitations/implications: The current system is a prototype. This MUDPY ontology can be extended by adding more classes in order to increase its functionality; for example, one can develop special plug-in widgets to generate project reports required during multimedia project planning and design. Practical implications: By using the MUDPY ontology, developers can follow a systematic process for project development, and better manage the complexity of multimedia projects. Originality/value: The paper introduces the MUDPY model and its ontology, and shows a multimedia author the pathway to manage a multitude of concepts and assets required in a multimedia project. (Original abstract)
Journal of Information Science
2006, v. 32, n. 5
Representing organizational memory for computer-aided utilization.
Ju, Teresa L.
Knowledge management; Memory; Human-computer interaction; Maps; XML; Computer architecture; Business information; Taiwan; Ontologies
Organizational memory (OM) is the means by which knowledge from the past is brought to bear on present activities. For effective use of OM, it must be represented in a machine-understandable form, so that man, machine, and OM can work in concert to perform business activities such as problem solving, decision making, workflow management, and organizational learning. To this end, we have developed a knowledge representation scheme that uses a trio of logic, ontology, and computation as knowledge representation constructs, Topic Maps in XML syntax (XTM) and related software tools as the representation technology, and three distinct but closely related ontologies (information, enterprise, and domain ontology) as the operationalized knowledge objects. Based on this knowledge representation scheme, we propose an OM architecture along with a feasible and practical methodology for representing OM to facilitate computer-aided utilization. The methodology has been applied to a laboratory experiment for a provider of knowledge-intensive services dubbed ‘Taiwan’s Dun & Bradstreet.’ A field interview indicates that top management endorses the OM architecture and developers confirm the feasibility of the methodology. (Author abstract)
A uniform conceptual model for knowledge management of international copyright law.
Lu, Wenhuan; Ikeda, Mitsuru
Descriptors: Copyright; Knowledge management; Ontology
Copyright issues are significant for worldwide information sharing, while mutual understanding about the commonalities and differences among international copyright law articles is difficult due to the diversity of legal knowledge representation. The goal of our research is to propose an appropriate methodology and capture a uniform conceptual model that will provide semantic level representation for processing and modelling international legal knowledge using ontological technology. This paper proposes a preliminary intention-oriented legal knowledge model as a pivotal model that, from the viewpoint of intention behind the law, manages and models legal knowledge derived from international law documents. We develop a domain ontology – international copyright law ontology, which is used as a fundamental conceptual framework to maintain consistency among diverse legal knowledge representations. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications, Ltd., copyright 2008]
A new WSD approach using word ontology and concept distribution.
Hung, Jason C.
Descriptors: Search strategies; Semantics; Natural language processing
This paper presents a method of word sense disambiguation that assigns a target word the sense that is most related to the senses of its neighbor words. Human languages have words that can mean different things in different contexts, and such words with multiple meanings are potentially ‘ambiguous’. ‘Word sense disambiguation’ means the process of ‘deciding which of several meanings of a term is intended in a given context’. We explore the use of measures of relatedness between word senses based on a novel hybrid approach. First, we investigate how to express a ‘concept’ literally and regularly. We apply set algebra to Wordnet’s synsets, cooperating with Wordnet’s word ontology. We establish regular rules for constructing various representations (lexical notations) of a concept using Boolean operators and word forms in various synset(s) defined in Wordnet. Thus, we establish a formal mechanism for quantifying and estimating the semantic relatedness between concepts_we facilitate ‘concept distribution statistics’ to determine the semantic relatedness between two lexically expressed concepts. Our method does not require any training in advanced. The experimental results showed good performance on Semcor, a subset of the Brown corpus. We observe that measures of semantic relatedness are useful sources of information for word sense disambiguation. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications, Ltd., copyright 2008]
LOM: A Linguistic Ontology Matcher Based on Information Retrieval
Pirro, Giuseppe; Talia, Domenico
Online information retrieval; Ontologies; Linguistics
Ontology mapping is a key problem to be solved for the success of the Semantic Web and related technologies. An ontology mapping algorithm aims at finding correspondences (or mappings) between entities of the source and target ontologies by combining several matching components, i.e., individual matchers, that exploit one or more sources of information encoded within the ontologies. In this paper, we investigate linguistic techniques for ontology mapping and underline their importance in paving the way to other matching techniques. We define a general mapping model architecture and discuss an implementation in the Lucene ontology matcher (LOM). LOM leverages the features of the Lucene search engine library. The basic idea is to gather the different kinds of linguistic information of the source ontology entities in Lucene documents that will be stored into an index. Mappings are discovered by using the values of entities in the target ontology as search arguments against the index created from the source ontology. Extensive experimental results using a popular benchmark test suite show the effectiveness of this approach in terms of precision, recall, F-measure and execution time as compared to other linguistic approaches. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications, Ltd., copyright 2009]
Journal of Information Science and Technology Association
2007, v. 57, n. 5
[Original title in Japanese]. / De-construction of information-unit in informational realism.
Gunji, Yukio-Pegio
Abstracting; Ontology; Information theory
In starting from Floridi’s informational realism, we investigate the ontological commitment in his ‘System – Level of abstraction – Model – Structure (SLMS)’ – scheme. We argue that the ontological commitment results from the discrepancy between objects and what is observed and is kept as the discrepancy between type and token in a theory. Such a discrepancy is perpetually kept in a theory, and leads to the deconstruction of informational unit, and that reveals evolutionary process of theory and/or reality. Adapted from the source document.
Toward an Automatic Reference Service
Masuda, Hidetaka; Kiyota, Yoji; Nakagawa, Hiroshi
Online reference work; Searching; Ontology
While using Web search engines plays a central role in information retrieval, the outputs of the Web search engines have several problems. For example, it is difficult to find necessary information and there are not a few information with low reliability. These problems can be solved with using libraries. However, the information and resources provided by libraries have the following problems. Those are not properly organized for ordinary users and those are less contemporary than the information on the Web. To improve the situation, we suggest methodology to guide Web to the resource how the library is useful as a clue by using library resources integratively such as information retrieval meta-knowledge, book classification systems, and Web resource. Adapted from the source document.
Journal of Information Technology
2006, v. 21, n. 4
A co-evolutionary complex systems perspective on information systems.
Allen, Peter M.; Varga, Liz
Information systems; Ontology; Epistemology; Information technology
The co-evolution of information systems (IS) and the processes that underpin the construction and development of IT systems are explained from a complex systems perspective. Evolution operates at the microscopic level; in organizations, this is the individual or agent. Each agent has an idiosyncratic view of the organization, using to some extent personal constructs in dealing with the reality of organizational life. These objects or constructs can be described and measured by most agents; they are well defined. Many of these objects are represented in electronic, IT systems. Each agent also has their own view as to how they know what they know, that is, their epistemology, which we argue is their IS, and is wider than the IT systems they use. The IS of each agent co-evolves, by interaction with other agents, based on the agent’s view of reality. The interaction of all agents constitutes the organization. Even more importantly, different values and interests motivate each agent. This is their axiology and it is what motivates them to learn and to develop their IS. An agent-based axiological framework is essential to understanding the evolution of organizations. It is the interaction of agents that builds consensus as to the shared reality of the organization, and this affects each agent’s ability and motivation to evolve IS further. In addition, we propose that it is time that IT systems included modelling capabilities, based on multi-agent representations of the organization and its context, to explore and support strategic thinking and decision making. (Author abstract)
Journal of Knowledge Management
2005, v. 9, n. 5
Next generation knowledge access
Davies, John; Duke, Alistair; Kings, Nick; Mladenic, Dunja; Bontcheva, Kalina; Grč r, Miha; Benjamins, Richard; Contreras, Jesus; Civico, Mercedes Blazquez; Glover, Tim
Computerized information storage and retrieval; World Wide Web; Semantic web; Searching; Knowledge management; Ontologies
Purpose: The paper shows how access to knowledge can be enhanced by using a set of innovative approaches and technologies based on the semantic web. Design/methodology/approach: Emerging trends in knowledge access are considered followed by a description of how ontologies and semantics can contribute. A set of tools is then presented which is based on semantic web technology. For each of these tools a detailed description of the approach is given together with an analysis of related and future work as appropriate. Findings: The tools presented are at the prototype stage but can already show how knowledge access can be improved by allowing users to more precisely express what they are looking for and by presenting to them in a form that is appropriate to their current context. Research limitations/implications: The tools show promising results in improving access to knowledge which will be further evaluated within a practical setting. The tools will be integrated and trialled as part of case studies within the SEKT project. This will allow their usability and practical applicability to be measured. Practical implications: Ontologies as a form of knowledge representation are increasing in importance. Knowledge management, and in particular knowledge access, will benefit from their widespread acceptance. The use of open standards and compatible tools in this area will be important to support interoperability and widespread access to disparate knowledge repositories. Originality/value: The paper presents research in an emerging but increasingly important field, i.e. semantic web-based knowledge technology. It describes how this technology can satisfy the demand for improved knowledge access, including providing knowledge delivery to users at the right time and in the correct form. (Original abstract)
The DILIGENT knowledge processes
Vrandecic, Denny; Pinto, Sofia; Tempich, Christoph; Sure, York
Knowledge management; Ontologies; DILIGENT
Purpose: Aims to present the ontology engineering methodology DILIGENT, a methodology focussing on the evolution of ontologies instead of the initial design, thus recognizing that knowledge is a tangible and moving target. Design/methodology/approach: First describes the methodology as a whole, then detailing one of the five main steps of DILIGENT. The second part describes case studies, either already performed or planned, and what we learned (or expect to learn) from them. Findings: With the case studies it was discovered the strengths and weaknesses of DILIGENT. During the evolution of ontologies, arguments need to be exchanged about the suggested changes. Identifies those kind of arguments which work best for the discussion of ontology changes. Research implications – DILIGENT recognizes ontology engineering methodologies like OnToKnowledge or Methontology as proven useful for the initial design, but expands them with its strong focus on the user-centric further development of the ontology and the provided integration of automatic agents in the process of ontology evolution. Practical implications: With DILIGENT the experience distilled from a number of case studies and offers the knowledge manager a methodology to work in an ever-changing environment. Originality/value: DILIGENT is the first methodology to put focus not on the initial development of the ontology, but on the user and his usage of the ontology, and on the changes introduced by the user. We take the user’s own view seriously and enable feedback towards the evolution of the ontology, stressing the ontology’s role as a shared conceptualisation. (Original abstract)
Management of dynamic knowledge
Haase, Peter; Volker, Johanna; Sure, York
Knowledge management; Digital libraries; Ontologies
Purpose: This paper presents a framework for ontology evolution tailored to Digital Libraries, which makes use of two different sources for change detection and propagation, the usage of ontologies by users and the changes of available data. Design/methodology/approach: After presenting the logical architecture of the evolution framework, we first illustrate how to deal with usage-driven changes, that is changes derived from the actual usage of ontologies. Second, we describe the generation of data-driven ontology changes based on the constant flow of documents coming into digital libraries. Findings: The proposed framework for ontology ontology evolution, which is currently applied and evaluated in the case studies, significantly reduces the costs of ontology updates and improves the quality of the ontology with respect to the users’ requirements. Practical implications: The management of dynamic knowledge is crucial for many knowledge management applications. Our approach for usage-driven and data-driven change discovery not only assures the consistency of ontologies modeling dynamic knowledge, but also reduces the burden of manual ontology engineering. Originality/value: This paper presents the first approach towards a common framework for ontology evolution based on usage-driven and data-driven change discovery. (Original abstract)
2007, v. 11, n. 1
A strategy-based ontology of knowledge management technologies.
Saito, Andre; Umemoto, Katsuhiro; Ikeda, Mitsuru
Knowledge management; Communications technology; Cataloguing; Information management
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to distinguish and describe knowledge management (KM) technologies according to their support for strategy. Design/methodology/approach – This study employed an ontology development method to describe the relations between technology KM and strategy and to categorize available KM technologies according to those relations. Ontologies are formal specifications of concepts in a domain and their inter-relationships, and can be used to facilitate common understanding and knowledge sharing. The study focused particularly on two sub-domains of the KM field: KM strategies and KM technologies. Findings – “KM strategy” has three meanings in the literature: approach to KM, knowledge strategy and KM implementation strategy Also, KM technologies support strategy via KM initiatives based on particular knowledge strategies and approaches to KM. The study distinguishes three types of KM technologies: component technologies, KM applications, and business applications. They all can be described in terms of “creation” and “transfer” knowledge strategies, and “personalization” and “codification” approaches to KM. Research limitations/implications – The resulting framework suggests that KM technologies can be analyzed better in the context of KM initiatives, instead of the usual approach associating them with knowledge processes. KM initiatives provide the background and contextual elements necessary to explain technology adoption and use. Practical implications – The framework indicates three alternative modes for organizational adoption of KM technologies: custom development of KM systems from available component technologies; purchase of KM-specific applications; or purchase of business-driven applications that embed KM functionality It also lists adequate technologies and provides criteria for selection in any of the cases. Originality/value – Among the many studies analyzing the role of technology in KM, an association with strategy has been missing. This paper contributes to filling this gap, integrating diverse contributions via a clearer definition of concepts and a visual representation of their relationships. This use of ontologies as a method, instead of an artifact, is also uncommon in the literature. (Author abstract)
Visual Ontology Alignment for Knowledge Sharing and Reuse
Lanzenberger, Monika; Sampson, Jennifer J.; Rester, Markus; Naudet, Yannick; Latour, Thibaud
Knowledge management; Audiovisual materials
Purpose — By providing interoperability users can be supported in sharing and reusing vocabularies and knowledge. Ontology alignment plays an important role in the context of semantic interoperability. Usually ontology alignment tools generate results that are difficult to understand or assess. In order to enable users to check and improve alignment results and to understand their consequences information visualization techniques are used. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the relevant quality aspects in ontology alignment as well as current activities and available tools. Design/methodology/approach — Based on a literature study quality measures for ontology alignment identified and requirements for visual ontology alignment are defined. As a proof of concepts a prototype called AlViz was developed. Findings — Information visualization offers appropriate methods for the assessment of ontology alignment results. Different levels of detail and overview help users to navigate and understand the alignments. The assessment of semi-structured resources by users involves learning activities. The neighborhood of the entity under investigation bears relevant semantic information. Therefore, assessment may include crisscrossing acquisition of knowledge representations and their semantics. Originality/value — Along a comprehensive framework alignment assessment tasks are identified and visualization tool is introduced and applied which aims at making ontology alignment results manageable and comprehensible. Adapted from the source document.
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
2004, v. 55, n. 3
The added value of task and ontology-based markup for information retrieval
Anjewierden, Anjo; de Hoog, Robert; Kabel, Suzanne; Wielinga, Bob J
Information work; Searching; Subject indexing; Ontologies
In this report, we investigate how retrieving information can be improved through task-related indexing of documents based on ontologies. Different index types, varying from content-based keywords to structured task-based indexing ontologies, are compared in an experiment that simulates the task of creating instructional material from a database of source material. To be able to judge the added value of task- and ontology-related indexes, traditional information retrieval performance measures are extended with new measures reflecting the quality of the material produced with the retrieved information. The results of the experiment show that a structured task-based indexing ontology improves the quality of the product created from retrieved material only to some extent, but that it certainly improves the efficiency and effectiveness of search and retrieval and precision of use. (Original abstract)
2004, v. 55, n. 7
A formal knowledge management ontology: conduct, activities, resources, and influences
Holsapple, CW ; Joshi, KD
Knowledge management; Ontologies
This article describes a collaboratively engineered general-purpose knowledge management (KM) ontology that can be used by practitioners, researchers, and educators. The ontology is formally characterized in terms of nearly one hundred definitions and axioms that evolved from a Delphi-like process involving a diverse panel of over 30 KM practitioners and researchers. The ontology identifies and relates knowledge manipulation activities that an entity (e.g., an organization) can perform to operate on knowledge resources. It introduces a taxonomy for these resources, which indicates classes of knowledge that may be stored, embedded, and/or represented in an entity. It recognizes factors that influence the conduct of KM both within and across KM episodes. The Delphi panelists judge the ontology favorably overall: its ability to unify KM concepts, its comprehensiveness, and utility. Moreover, various implications of the ontology for the KM field are examined as indicators of its utility for practitioners, educators, and researchers. (Original abstract)
2005, v. 56, n. 1
Toward an alternative notion of information systems ontologies: information engineering as a hermeneutic enterprise
Fonseca, Frederico T; Martin, James E
Computerized information storage and retrieval; Ontologies; Hermeneutics
In this paper we discuss the construction of information systems ontologies. We summarize and discuss Barry Smith’s review (2003a) of the field in the paper, “Ontology.” In that essay Smith concludes with a plea for ontologies that reflect the categories of current scientific theories because they represent our best knowledge of the world. In this context, we develop an argument for a hermeneutic approach to ontologies – one compatible with the orientation introduced into information science by Winograd and Flores (1986) and later developed by many others. To do this, we argue that the literature in the philosophy and history of science supports a hermeneutic interpretation of the nature and growth of science. This, given Smith’s argument, shows the relevance of hermeneutics to the creation of information system ontologies. The problems associated with understanding and creating information systems ontologies are addressed fruitfully only if one begins by acknowledging that databases are mechanisms for communication involving judgments and interpretations by intelligent and knowledgeable users. The main contributions of this paper are our conclusions that (a) information system ontologies should take into consideration a perspective of the philosophy and history of science, and (b) hermeneutics as construed by Gadamer (1975, 1979) constitutes a place from which we can understand the tasks of information ontologists and database users. (Original abstract)
2005, v. 56, n. 5
Genescene: an ontology-enhanced integration of linguistic and co-occurrence based relations in biomedical texts
Chen, Hsinchun ; Leroy, Gondy
Online information retrieval; Health care; Medicine; Genetics; Searching; Bioinformatics; Linguistics; Genescene
The increasing amount of publicly available literature and experimental data in biomedicine makes it hard for biomedical researchers to stay up-to-date. Genescene is a toolkit that will help alleviate this problem by providing an overview of published literature content. We combined a linguistic parser with Concept Space, a cooccurrence based semantic net. Both techniques extract complementary biomedical relations between noun phrases from MEDLINE abstracts. The parser extracts precise and semantically rich relations from individual abstracts. Concept Space extracts relations that hold true for the collection of abstracts. The Gene Ontology, the Human Genome Nomenclature, and the Unified Medical Language System, are also integrated in Genescene. Currently, they are used to facilitate the integration of the two relation types, and to select the more interesting and high-quality relations for presentation. A user study focusing on p53 literature is discussed. All MEDLINE abstracts discussing p53 were processed in Genescene. Two researchers evaluated the terms and relations from several abstracts of interest to them. The results show that the terms were precise (precision 93%) and relevant, as were the parser relations (precision 95%). The Concept Space relations were more precise when selected with ontological knowledge (precision 78%) than without (60%). (Original abstract)
2005, v. 56, n. 11
ONTOWEB: implementing an ontology-based web retrieval system
Kim, Hyun Hee
Online information retrieval; World Wide Web; Searching; Ontologies; Knowledge management; ONTOWEB
The design and implementation of an ontology-based Web retrieval (ONTOWEB) system is described; ONTOWEB allows the semantic search of the Web resources of international organizations such as the World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). A firm’s knowledge management project is introduced first, followed by a description of the ONTOWEB system’s design, implementation, and evaluation. The ONTOWEB system has two components: databases and an ontology-based search engine. The ontology-based search engine is a tool used to query the information that has been loaded into the database. Last, to evaluate the system, an experiment was conducted to compare the performance of the proposed system with that of Internet search engines in terms of relevance and search time. This study shows that ontologies can be used not only to improve precision, but also to reduce the search time. Because of the expense of annotating resources, the domains that contain the most valuable knowledge, such as the medical and the business sectors, are prime areas for future ontology applications. (Original abstract)
The double role of ontologies in information science research
Fonseca, Frederico
Ontologies; Information science; Information systems; Search strategies
In philosophy, Ontology is the basic description of things in the world. In information science, an ontology refers to an engineering artifact, constituted by a specific vocabulary used to describe a certain reality. Ontologies have been proposed for validating both conceptual models and conceptual schemas; however, these roles are quite dissimilar. In this article, we show that ontologies can be better understood if we classify the different uses of the term as it appears in the literature. First, we explain Ontology (upper case O) as used in Philosophy. Then, we propose a differentiation between ontologies of information systems and ontologies for information systems. All three concepts have an important role in information science. We clarify the different meanings and uses of Ontology and ontologies through a comparison of research by Wand and Weber and by Guarino in ontology-driven information systems. The contributions of this article are twofold: (a) It provides a better understanding of what ontologies are, and (b) it explains the double role of ontologies in information science research. (Author abstract)
2008, v. 59, n. 1
Ontology-supported polarity mining.
Zhou, Lina; Chaovalit, Pimwadee
Descriptors: Online information retrieval; Semantic analysis; Ontology
Polarity mining provides an in-depth analysis of semantic orientations of text information. Motivated by its success in the area of topic mining, we propose an ontology-supported polarity mining (OSPM) approach. The approach aims to enhance polarity mining with ontology by providing detailed topic-specific information. OSPM was evaluated in the movie review domain using both supervised and unsupervised techniques. Results revealed that OSPM outperformed the baseline method without ontology support. The findings of this study not only advance the state of polarity mining research but also shed light on future research directions. [Copyright 2008 Wiley Periodicals Inc.]
Ontology-based speech act identification in a bilingual dialog system using partial pattern trees.
Yeh, Jui-Feng; Wu, Chung-Hsien; Chen, Ming-Jun
Descriptors: Speech recognition; Semantic analysis; Ontologies
This article presents a bilingual ontology-based dialog system with multiple services. An ontology-alignment algorithm is proposed to integrate ontologies of different languages for cross-language applications. A domain- specific ontology is further extracted from the bilingual ontology using an island-driven algorithm and a domain corpus. This study extracts the semantic words/concepts using latent semantic analysis (LSA). Based on the extracted semantic words and the domain ontology, a partial pattern tree is constructed to model the speech act of a spoken utterance. The partial pattern tree is used to deal with the ill-formed sentence problem in a spoken-dialog system. Concept expansion based on domain ontology is also adopted to improve system performance. For performance evaluation, a medical dialog system with multiple services, including registration information, clinic information, and FAQ information, is implemented. Four performance measures were used separately for evaluation. The speech act identification rate was 86.2%. A task success rate of 77% was obtained. The contextual appropriateness of the system response was 78.5%. Finally, the rate for correct FAQ retrieval was 82%, an improvement of 15% over the keyword-based vector-space model. The results show the proposed ontology-based speech-act identification is effective for dialog management. [Copyright 2008 Wiley Periodicals Inc.]
Ontology-based evaluation of Organizational Memory
Weinberger, Hadas; Te’eni, Dov; Frank, Ariel J.
Descriptors: Knowledge management; Organizational learning; Ontologies
In this article we offer a new approach to evaluating Organizational Memory (OM). Our proposed evaluation methodology, named KnowledgeEco, is based on an ontology for the domain of OM. Its key steps are: 1) mapping the OM in the evaluated organization onto the ontology concepts; 2) noting which entities from the ontology are missing in the OM; and 3) applying a series of rules that help assess the impact of the OM on organizational learning. This systematic evaluation thus helps to propose ways to improve the evaluated OM. We present three case studies that demonstrate the feasibility of KnowledgeEco for evaluating OM and for suggesting improvements. We also identify some weaknesses in the OMs common to the three organizations cited in the case studies. Finally, we discuss how the KnowledgeEco ontology-based methodology establishes utility and contributes to further research in the field of OM. [Copyright 2008 Wiley Periodicals Inc.]
Building ontological relationships: a new approach
Kayed, Ahmad; Hirzallah, Nael; Al Shalabi, Luai A.; Najjar, Mohannad
Descriptors: Search strategies; Ontology; Data mining; Algorithms
Ontology plays an essential role in recognizing the meaning of the information in Web documents. It has been shown that extracting concepts is easier than building relationships among them. For a defined set of concepts, many existing algorithms produce all possible relationships for that set. This makes the process of refining the relationships almost impossible. A new algorithm is needed to reduce the number of relationships among a defined set of concepts produced by existing algorithms. This article contributes such an algorithm, which enables a domain-knowledge expert to refine the relationships linking a set of concepts. In the research reported here, text-mining tools have been used to extract concepts in the domain of e-commerce laws. A new algorithm has been proposed to reduce the number of extracted relationships. It groups the concepts according to the number of relationships with other concepts and provides formalization. An experiment and software have been built, proving that reducing the number of relationships will reduce the efforts needed from a human expert. [Copyright 2008 Wiley Periodicals Inc.]
Information Organization and Retrieval Using a Topic Maps-Based Ontology: Results of a Task-Based Evaluation
Yi, Myonqho
Descriptors: Online information retrieval; Information management; Ontologies
As information becomes richer and more complex, alternative information-organization methods are needed to more effectively and efficiently retrieve information from various systems, including the Web. The objective of this study is to explore how a Topic Maps-based ontology approach affects users’ searching performance. Forty participants participated in a task-based evaluation where two dependent variables, recall and search time, were measured. The results of this study indicate that a Topic Maps-based ontology information retrieval (TOIR) system has a significant and positive effect on both recall and search time, compared to a thesaurus-based information retrieval (TIR) system. These results suggest that the inclusion of a Topic Maps-based ontology is a beneficial approach to take when designing information retrieval systems. [Copyright 2008 Wiley Periodicals Inc.]
Object-Fuzzy Concept Network: An Enrichment of Ontologies in Semantic Information Retrieval
Calegari, Silvia; Sanchez, Elie
Online information retrieval; Ontologies; Semantics
This article shows how a fuzzy ontology-based approach can improve semantic documents retrieval. After formally defining a fuzzy ontology and a fuzzy knowledge base, a special type of new fuzzy relationship called (semantic) correlation, which links the concepts or entities in a fuzzy ontology, is discussed. These correlations, first assigned by experts, are updated after querying or when a document has been inserted into a database. Moreover, in order to define a dynamic knowledge of a domain adapting itself to the context, it is shown how to handle a tradeoff between the correct definition of an object, taken in the ontology structure, and the actual meaning assigned by individuals. The notion of a fuzzy concept network is extended, incorporating database objects so that entities and documents can similarly be represented in the network. Information retrieval (IR) algorithm, using an object-fuzzy concept network (O-FCN), is introduced and described. This algorithm allows us to derive a unique path among the entities involved in the query to obtain maxima semantic associations in the knowledge domain. Finally, the study has been validated by querying a database using fuzzy recall, fuzzy precision, and coefficient variant measures in the crisp and fuzzy cases. [Copyright 2008 Wiley Periodicals Inc.]
Journal of the China Society for Scientific and Technical Information
2004, v. 23, n. 1
Study on ontology based information retrieval
Fu, Jiang; Hongwei, Wang; Jiachun, Wu
Computerized information storage and retrieval; Searching; Terms; Ontology
In this paper, we first introduce the basic concept of ontology, and then present a formal ontological model using Description Logic (DL) and a method for testing the subsumption relation between terms. Finally we discuss the semantic-enabling information retrieval mechanism based on the established ontology model. Original article in Chinese. (Original abstract)
2004, v. 23, n. 2
Ontology based metadata model and expression using DAML
Fu, Jiang; Wang, Hongwei; Wu, Jiachun
Online information retrieval; Searching; Metadata; Ontology; DAML
Ontology is an explicit specification of conceptualizations, which can explicitly and formally express the semantics of the concepts and their relationship. In this paper, we first introduce the basic concept of ontology, and then present an ontology based metadata model. At last, we discuss the expression of the metadata model using DAML. Original article in Chinese. (Original abstract)
2004, v. 23, n. 3
Design of bottom-level structure of database in ontology-based intelligent retrieval system
Li, Jing
Online information retrieval; Searching; Ontologies; Object oriented technology
The design of DB structure in ontology-based retrieval system was put forward. The object-oriented feature about this structure and problems in designing structure were also argued in this article. Original article in Chinese. (Original abstract)
2004, v. 23, n. 4
A study on ontology evolution for knowledge management
He, Sailong; Liu, Baisong
Knowledge management; Ontologies
The complexity and diversity of domain knowledge and terminology is the major hurdle for a successful operation of a knowledge management system. Ontologies are set to play a key role in the KM system, as they provide a reusable piece of knowledge about a specific domain. However, those pieces of knowledge are not static, but evolve over time. Domain changes, adaptations to different tasks, or changes in the conceptualization require modifications of ontology. Support for ontology evolution becomes very important in distributed development and use of ontologies. The paper first analyzes the causes and the consequences of ontologies evolution in knowledge management. Then the system framework and application experiment of ontology evolution management are discussed. Ontologies identification and the definition of ontology change mechanisms are our focuses. Finally we propose the future work of ontology evolution management. Original article in Chinese. (Original abstract)
2004, v. 23, n. 6
Ontology reasoning of knowledge element based on XML platform
Pan, Longfa; Wen, Youkui; Xu, Duanyi
Computer applications; Expert systems; Knowledge representation; Ontologies; Markup languages; XML
This paper puts forward the viewpoint that traditional information retrieval systems cannot satisfy the user’s requirements for knowledge. The cause is that the depth of knowledge organizing is in the administrative levels of document. The solving means of the problem is that the control unit of the knowledge of document goes deep into the knowledge element as a unit. The paper points out that ontology and XML tools are the general foundation platform implementing the computer extraction of knowledge element and the reasoning of knowledge. Original article in Chinese. (Original abstract – amended)
Study on ontology of knowledge discovery
Zhong, Jiarui
Computer applications; Expert systems; Knowledge discovery; Ontologies
This paper reviews the history of research in knowledge discovery, clarifies concepts which may be ambiguous, and suggests means of merging a variety of working platforms into an integral whole. Original article in Chinese. (Original abstract)
2005, v. 24, n. 1
Study on key technologies of ontology based knowledge management
Baisong, Liu
Knowledge management; Ontologies
Nowadays, in an enterprise or organization, knowledge management has become a key technology to increase intelligence of technique, competition, business and strategy. But they have a common limitation: they are insufficient in dynamic interaction with users, which is denoted by the static usage of knowledge and the closed maintenance of system. In accordance with this, we construct an ontology-based open knowledge management system, which treat the dynamic opening as the key issue. Surrounding the opening, this system investigates the method of realizing opening from three dimensions: shared-comprehend-bases, opened-knowledge-integration, and ontology knowledge (semi-) automatic construction. Firstly we propose an ontology-based knowledge management framework (OOKM). Then we discuss the key technologies of OOKM, including ontology learning and ontology evolution technologies. Original article in Chinese. (Original abstract)
2005, v. 24, n. 2
Research on representation of Chinese classified thesaurus in OWL and its implied semantic reveal
Zeng, Xinhong
Thesauri; Classification; Chinese materials; Ontology; Semantic analysis
This paper discusses the significance of representing Chinese thesauri in OWL as ontologies which are available on the Web. Based on the related research work of other experts, it presents a scheme for converting Chinese Classified Thesaurus (CCT) to an ontology in OWL Lite. It also puts forward a solution for revealing the semantic behind the compound concepts that exist in the CCT largely. Original article in Chinese language. (Original abstract)
2005, v. 24, n. 6
Research on semantic retrieval based on ontology.
Shengchun, Ding; Yonghua, Cen; Defang, Gu
Online information retrieval; Searching; Ontologies
After an introductory explanation of the connotation of semantic retrieval and concept space, two forms of existing concept space are analyzed. The building method, the description language and the edit tool Protege of the concept space based on ontology are studied particularly. Based on these, the steps and the key technologies of semantic retrieval system based on Ontology are analyzed. Finally, simple semantic retrieval is realized using Protege. Original article in Chinese. (Author abstract – amended)
A model of knowledge retrieval supporting semantic search.
Nan, Li; Jiqing, Sun
Online information retrieval; Searching; Ontologies; Semantic analysis
Based on Ontology Model for the Semantic Web, this article builds a searching environment to support semantic search. In this essay we also propose introducing the method of semantic analysis and statistics into Information Retrieval, and put forward a new model of Knowledge Retrieval. In this model, we use the principle of Information Entropy to quantify the process of semantic analysis with the support of searching environment, and to control the process of semantic extension efficiently, therefore realize a controllable Knowledge Retrieval with high degree of recall and accuracy. Original article in Chinese. (Author abstract)
2006, v. 25, n. 1
Research on the ontology translation model in semantic web.
Hui, Dong; Xia, Zhao
World Wide Web; Semantic web; Ontologies
Under the circumstances of the semantic web, field ontologies are usually used to organize distributed information resources. To resolve the location and integration problems of the distributed information resources efficiently, this paper puts forward a new model of ontology translation and does research concerning principles and methodology, expatiating on the various segments of the model. The discussion focuses on the application principles of algorithms in the Similarity Segment and multiple descriptive methods of concept-mapping rules in the Semantic Translation Segment. Original article in Chinese. (Author abstract)
2006, v. 25, n. 2
[Original title in Chinese]. [An ontology-based approach of web texts classification.]
Yun, Ling; Guiyi, Wei; Jun, Liu
Classification; Chinese materials; World Wide Web; Ontologies
Traditional methods for text classification need text-training and characteristic abstracting in the step of text-expression. The work of collecting training texts is laborious and time-consuming. Additionally, it is difficult to abstract the characteristics from Chinese texts. In order to resolve above problems, this paper puts forward an approach of ontology-based web text classification. Firstly, the approach establishes an ontology model based on Hownet theory. Then, it creates ontologies for each subclass of the classification system. The web texts classification is performed using these ontologies. Comparing with the method of KNN, the results of our experiments indicate that the accuracy of ontology-based approach is close to KNN’s, its algorithms is more steady than KNN’s, and its recalling rate is more eminent than KNN’s. Original article in Chinese. (Author abstract)
[Original title in Chinese]. [Support vector machine and its application in automatic document classification.]
Xiaoyu, Tian; Jingguo, Liang
Computer applications; Data mining; Automatic classification; Chinese materials; Knowledge representation; Ontologies; Support vector machine
Aiming to documents classification in data mining, a classification method based on the support vector machine is presented in this paper. The multi-layer linked SVM model that can classify the samples set into multi-categories is constructed. After it is constructed according to training samples set, the model can be applied to practical samples automatic classification. The method is shown about how the model is constructed and applied to classification. Two sorts of kernel function are applied to SVM, they are multinominal function and radial basis function. The model and algorithm are applied to some documents of China periodical document database and classification results illustrate its practicability. Original article in Chinese. (Author abstract)
[Original title in Chinese]. [Research on XML documents cluster.]
Youneng, Pan
Computer applications; Data mining; Automatic classification; Clustering; Chinese materials; Knowledge representation; Ontologies; XML; Similarity measures
On the basis of text cluster, the author makes an exploratory research on XML documents cluster, through the improvement on partition cluster and layer cluster, makes them can use on XML documents cluster. Then, the author discusses some method about XML documents similarity calculation. Original article in Chinese. (Author abstract)
2006, v. 25, n. 3
[Original title in Chinese]. [Research on the ontology-based retrieval model of digital library (I): explanation of the architecture.]
Hui, Dong; Ning, Yang; Chuanming, Yu; Ying, Jiang; Guohu, Xu; Jidong, Zhang
Computerized information storage and retrieval; Searching; Digital libraries; Ontologies
In this paper, the author discusses the design, the construction and the realization of the ontology-based retrieval model of digital library (“Guo Gong He Zuo” digital library, GGHZ-DL for short) in the domain of history. Conforming the application developing standard of J2EE, GGHZ-DL realizes such functions as ontology base construction, ontology retrieval, ontology inference and ontology visualization. The paper focuses on the analysis of the data structure and some key algorithms. Original article in Chinese. (Author abstract)
[Original title in Chinese]. [A model for ontology-driven web information retrieval and its realization.]
Lanping, Feng; Lijun, Zhu; Jiguo, Zhang
Computerized information storage and retrieval; World Wide Web; Searching; Ontologies
In this paper, a model for ontology-driven Web Information Retrieval (WIR) is designed to solve the problem existing in the current WIR, for example low recall. User query formalizing module and query analyzing module are the key modules in the model. In our experiment, Pumped Storage Power (PSP) domain is chosen to realize the model simply, in which concept query, expanded semantic query and reduced semantic query are provided based on PSP ontology. The model can greatly improve the precision of recall, meet the users and achieve the goal of intelligent retrieval information. Original article in Chinese. (Author abstract)
2006, v. 25, n. 4
Research on the ontology-based retrieval model of digital library (I) – semantic information acquisition.
Hui, Dong; Chuanming, Yu; Ying, Jiang; Ning, Yang; Guohu, Xu; Hua, Zhang
Online information retrieval; Searching; Semantic relations; Ontologies; Digital libraries; Institutional repositories
Semantic information acquisition is an emerging technology. In this text, the author realized the GGHZ semantic information acquisition component with the steps below: splitting the paragraph into sentence, word tokenization and Part-of Speech tagging, selecting the semantic predict, selecting the semantic subject based on the semantic predict, selecting the semantic object based on the semantic predict, pronoun resolution, time correction and location correction and at last updating the semantic extraction context. The author provided the technical details in realizing the semantic information acquisition. (Author abstract)
2006, v. 25, n. 6
Ontology learning: principle, method and related research progress.
Kong, Jing
Automatic text analysis; Ontology; Learning
Ontology Learning is the set of methods and techniques used for building an ontology from scratch, enriching, or adapting an existing ontology in a semi-automatic fashion using several sources. This paper outlines the study of ontology learning, describes the frame, architecture, technologies, approaches and algorithm of ontology learning. It presents the problem, difficulty and future research of ontology learning. (Author abstract)
Research on ontology-based retrieval model of digital library(IV): inference mechanism of history domain knowledge.
Dong, Hui; Yu, Chuanming; Xu, Guohu; Jiang, Ying; Ao, Qing; Chen, Liang; Wang, Guoyu; Xia, Yang
Automatic text analysis; Ontology; Digital libraries; Online information retrieval
In our opinion, ontology-based domain knowledge inference includes logic error-check inference and domain deductive knowledge detection reasoning. Inferences on ontology-based domain knowledge can help us check out the mistakes and flaws in the knowledge logic system, reduce fussy workload of ontology buildings, lessen our dependence on the domain experts and represent deductive domain knowledge. Based on the analysis of the semantic relations in the GGHZ domain knowledge, we developed an inference rules base (including 107 static rules and dynamic rules), and based our inferences on TABLEAU arithmetic and RETE arithmetic, then implemented logic error-check inferences and deductive knowledge detection reasoning through two reasoning engines of Racer and Jena. (Author abstract)
Domain ontology towards knowledge processing and its applications.
Zeng, Qingtian; Duan, Hua; Yang, Hongmei; Lu, Yan; Liang, Yongquan
Automatic text analysis; Text processing; Ontology; Knowledge acquisition; Knowledge representation
The model for domain ontology towards knowledge processing is defined, which is composed of instances, categories, attributes, relations and inter-categories relations. With the model for domain ontology, a frame-based representation language, a three-level knowledge inheritance hierarchy of domain knowledge and the domain ontology axiom system are presented. Driven by the domain ontology, we introduce the framework for domain knowledge acquisition from text and the knowledge verification methods. A domain ontology management and knowledge acquisition environment is presented, and the main performances of this environment are introduced with details. (Author abstract)
2007, v. 26, n. 1
[Original title in Chinese]. / Automatic construction of domain ontology based on terminology dictionary.
He, Yan; Sui, Zhifang; Duan, Huiming; Li, Sujian
Automatic construction; Ontology; Terminology; Natural language processing; Dictionaries
Building ontology automatically based on dictionaries, encyclopedias and texts, is becoming one of the hot and tough problems for the researchers. ‘Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology’ is an authoritative dictionary of computer terms edited by the famous experts. We use its catalog to build ontology of computer science and technology, and acquire instances from the expository text of terms in the encyclopedia. (Author abstract)
[Original title in Chinese]. / Extracting a sub-ontology from multiple RDFS ontologies.
Miao, Zhuang; Zhang, Yafei; Lu, Jianjiang
Ontologies; Knowledge representation; Resource Description Frame Schema
RDFS ontology provides a frame for representing semantic information. It is the core of Semantic Web. The efficiency of domain-specific knowledge application decreases with the size of ontology increasing. Extracting a domain sub-ontology from source ontologies may solve this problem. Knowledge of single ontology may be not sufficient and more domain knowledge can be obtained by extracting a sob-ontology from multiple source ontologies than from single one. RDFS ontologies are abstracted as graph models. According to the RDFS inference rules and the mapping among multiple ontologies, the closure of multiple RDFS source ontologies can be constructed. We also present an algorithm based on the graph theory to extract a sub-graph with domain concepts as nodes. This sub-graph is regarded as the required domain ontology. The method is applicable to RDFS domain ontology extraction. Applying the method, a domain ontology can be built fast and effectively. (Author abstract)
2007, v. 26, n. 3
[Original title in Chinese]. / A review of foreign literature on ontology-based conceptual modeling of information systems.
Sun, Fan
Systems development; Modelling; Ontology
Conceptual modeling of information systems that occurs during the requirements analysis phase of information systems development is the activities of formally representing and documenting static and dynamic phenomena in some domain. Conceptual modeling belongs as a subdiscipline of requirements engineering and software engineering. Ontology-based conceptual modeling of information systems is the approach that supports conceptual modeling of information systems by using ontological theory or models. According to current studies on ontology-based conceptual modeling of information systems conducted by foreign scholars, this paper divides it into two major schools of thought: one for BWW ontology school; another for REA schools. On the basis of it, the study results of two schools are introduced and compared and the direction of their future research is prospected. Adapted from the source document.
2007, v. 26, n. 4
[Original title in Chinese]. / Review of research about ontology conception.
Zhang, Xiulan; Jiang, Ling
Ontology; Artificial intelligence; Library and information science
Ontology has gained a broad attention within the artificial intelligence community, knowledge engineering community and library and information science community in recent years, and its philosophical ideas have affected these communities a lot. However, the view of ontology conception can’t come to terms, which blocks the study on ontology. The paper started with the origin and philosophy headstream of ontology, and then summarized the connotation of ontology in research fields as Artificial Intelligence, Knowledge Engineering and Library and Information Science. Basing on this, the authors gave out their viewpoints of ontology. Adapted from the source document.
[Original title in Chinese]. / Study on the information retrieval based on Chinese legal FrameNet ontology.
Jia, Junzhi; Tai, Yangfang
Online information retrieval; Ontology; Semantics
Using the principle of Frame Semantics, we constructed a Chinese legal FrameNet ontology based on the FrameNet project of University of California-Berkeley. In review of the existing problems of web information retrieval such as low accuracy and high noises, the purpose of this paper is to explore the resolution of semantic retrieval based on the application of our constructed legal ontology. With the support of legal ontology, both the user’s input of inquires and the texts from web are understood and processed through semantic analysis to realize the precise matching of research objects and annotated texts and to improve the efficiency of retrieval. Adapted from the source document.
2007, v. 26, n. 5
[Original title in Chinese]. / A study of ontology-based web crawler.
Yang, Xueming; Liu, Baisong
Web crawlers; Online information retrieval; Ontology
The Web, the largest unstructured database of the world, has greatly improved access to information. However, information on the Web is largely disorganized. Due to the distributed nature of the World Wide Web it is difficult to use it as a tool for information and knowledge management. Therefore, user doing the difficult task of exploring the Web has to be supported by intelligent means. This paper proposes an approach for information discovery building on a comprehensive framework for ontology-based web crawler. Our framework includes preprocessing module and ontology management module. It defines a relevance computation strategies of the web page and provides an empirical evaluation which has shown promising results. Adapted from the source document.
[Original title in Chinese]. / Research on Ontology-based user interests mining in personalized knowledge services.
Zuo, Hui; Zhang, Yufeng; Ai, Danxiang
Descriptors: Information services; Ontologies; User profiles
In current times of knowledge economy, personalized knowledge services is the inevitable trend of information services development, and it is a high level service pattern to satisfy users’ diversified and specialized knowledge requirement. The mining of user interests and the building of user profile are essential to personalized knowledge services research. In this paper, we introduced Ontology into this research, and studied the representation of user interests knowledge using Ontology, and based on which, developed a dynamic method of learning and mining user interests. We analyzed the three key steps of this method including reference Ontology building, user interests knowledge primitive learning and user profile optimizing. The conclusion of our study shows that Ontology-based user interests mining can better represent, trace and learn personalized user knowledge, realize the discovery and utilization of user implicit interests, and satisfy users’ special information needs so that it can provide personalized knowledge services of good quality. Adapted from the source document.
Constructing the affective lexicon Ontology
Linhong, Xu; Hongfei, Lin; Yu, Pan; Hui, Ren; Jianmei, Chen
Descriptors: Ontologies; Lexicons
Affective computing has received more and more interests in the field of artificial intelligence. However, constructing the affective lexicon Ontology is the basis of textual affective computing. Firstly, the paper analyzes the status of the emotional classification, and then classification system is determined. Finally, affective lexicon ontology which synthesizes various resources is constructed. In the process of acquiring the knowledge, the framework of ontology is filled by the combination of manual classification and acquiring the intensity automatically. The paper describes emotional classification and lexical intensity etc, and the distribution of affective lexicons. Adapted from the source document.
Discussion on domain Ontology-based patent intelligence knowledge mining
Ran, Tao; Xiaofei, Li
Descriptors: Data mining; Patents; Ontologies
The patent is an important information source for enterprises to obtain competitive intelligence, and to control technology development strategy and product tactic, also can use patent information for invention. How to organize and manage patent intelligence efficiently to mining patent intelligence becomes an important issue. According to the patent analysis of drug stents and the structure of patent intelligence, we introduce the theory of Ontology, TRIZ and inferential mechanism, discussion on domain Ontology-based patent intelligence knowledge mining. We also research on system of patent intelligence discovery, which is based on Ontology, by which Users can get the patent intelligence easily to share and reuse patent knowledge efficiently. Adapted from the source document.
Research on OntoThesaurus Co-Construction and Sharing System (OTCSS)
Xinhong, Zeng; Zhong, Ming; Ying, Jiang; Weiming, Lin; Zhenning, Hu; Shuiying, Zhang
Descriptors: Automatic construction; Thesauri; Computer assisted indexing; Ontology
This paper presents the design idea and architecture of OTCSS (OntoThesaurus Co-construction and Sharing System), then delineates the TBox definition and ABox automatic conversion for translating Chinese thesaurus to OntoThesaurus in OWL, the consistency checking mechanism of OntoThesaurus, OntoThesaurus’ promising applications both in Library community and Semantic Web, the process of realizing co-construction and dynamic updating for OntoThesaurus by collecting knowledge from indexers, domain experts and general users while they’re using it. Finally the proposal that the thesauri owners could update existing Chinese thesauri to OntoThesauri and realize their co-construction and sharing services via Internet quickly is given. Adapted from the source document.
Ontology-Based Case-Study Database System for Enterprise Informatization: Development and Management
Meiyun, Zuo; Ying, Tan; Shijuan, Wang
Descriptors: Information management; Database design; Ontologies; Business information
Knowledge transfer is one of the key factors for the successful implementation of enterprise informatization project. On the basis of introduction of ontology concept, this paper constructs an ontology model for enterprise informatization knowledge as well as designs an enterprise informatization case base management system. Furthermore, the paper analyzes the methods for the collection of cases in the enterprise informatization case base. For the cases collection, the authors purpose the case management system should apply Web 2.0 technology to attract users’ participations as many as possible. The Case Base will be divided into two kinds — the original base and the final base. Cases that the users upload to the original base will be transferred into the final base after corresponding evaluation and selection. Moreover, the system will inform related users about the increase and update information of both the original base and the final base. Also, we have developed the enterprise informatization case base management system and made the system running in the scope of our Lab. Adapted from the source document.
Research on Rule-Based Inference Mechanism of Intelligent Retrieval System
Hui, Nie
Descriptors: Computerized information retrieval; Ontology
With the application in the field of Digital Library, research on rule-based inference mechanism of Retrieval System is performed in the paper. Supported by ontology-based knowledge base, the retrieval system is operated on metadata sets. The implication relationships between concepts and information implied in the metadata base can be obtained by concept relationship and inference rules. Ratiocinative rules are extracted from the semantic relations of Digital Library resources and rule-based inference runs in forward chaining mode. Forward rule-based Inference is competent for those retrieval tasks with no certain retrieval object and with large result space, which can mine the implicated relationships from the existed data the light of rule set. The Method is implemented and tested in an Intelligent Retrieval prototype system. Meanwhile, in order to improve the arithmetic efficiency, a strategy FILR, First Inference Late Retrieval is introduced. Adapted from the source document.
State-of-the-Art and Prospect of Lexical Semantic Knowledge Bases
Hong, Zhu; Yang, Liu
Descriptors: Automatic text analysis; Natural language processing; Ontology
As the semantic knowledge carrier for text understanding by computers, lexical semantic knowledge bases have been widely used in natural language processing such as machine translation, information retrieval, etc. We give a detailed analysis of the state-of-the-art of and tendencies in them, which are referred to as ontologicalization and multilingualization respectively. These two developments could remedy of the defects of knowledge share and knowledge communication of lexical semantic knowledge bases. The existing problems and future directions are at last put forward. Adapted from the source document.
Semantic Based Semi-Structured P2P Network
Fayi, Yang; Jun, Peng; Jun, Lu; Dewei, Chen
Descriptors: Online information retrieval; Ontology; Networks; Semantics
In this paper, we proposed a semantic based semi-structured P2P network architecture for ontology annotated documents’ sharing and retrieval. The vector of ontology concepts is used as the feature of a peer. Based on the similarity function, the peers are clustered into peer groups. And the query is routed by peer group servers according to the similarities of the query and the group vectors. The weighting functions of the ontology concepts and similarity functions of concept vectors are described in detail in this paper as also. Benefiting from using the semantic information to construct the P2P network, the performance of peer clustering and query routing is quite enhanced compared to the pure text based P2P network, which is proved by the experiment results. Adapted from the source document.
2005, v. 18, n. 6
An ontological account of action in processes and plans
Aitken, Stuart
Ontologies; Actions
This paper formalises the constraints governing the relationship between actions and their preconditions and effects in processes and plans. By providing axiomatisations and a model theory, we establish a sound basis for both deductive and constraint satisfaction-based reasoning. The constraints we present are expressed in a common ontology of classes and relations that is the basis of process and plan representations. (Original abstract)
2005, v. 18, n. 7
Integration of behavioural requirements specification within compositional knowledge engineering.
Damian, Daniela E. Herlea; Jonker, Catholijn M.; Treur*, Jan; Wijngaards, Niek J. E.
Knowledge engineering; Requirements specification; Ontology; Integration
In this paper it is shown how specification of behavioural requirements from informal to formal can be integrated within knowledge engineering. The integration of requirements specification has addressed, in particular: the integration of requirements acquisition and specification with ontology acquisition and specification, the relations between requirements specifications and specifications of task models and problem solving methods, and the relation of requirements specification to verification. (Original abstract)
2006, v. 19, n. 2
Semantic foundations of medical information systems based on top-level ontologies.
Herre, H.; Heller, B.
Medical information systems; Ontologies; Semantics; Knowledge modeling
The modeling of knowledge and its implementation in software systems is not sufficiently supported by proper guidelines and well-established principles. An interdisciplinary approach seems to be necessary because the development of guidelines for sound knowledge modeling – in particular in medicine – requires expertise from areas such as linguistics, informatics, medicine, cognitive science and philosophy. In the present paper, we discuss relevant aspects of such an approach and outline some results of the work of the research group Onto-Med. In particular, we expound a methodology, which supports the semantic foundation of medical information systems by using top-level ontologies. (Author abstract)
2006, v. 19, n. 4
Petri net ontology.
Gasevic, Dragan; Devedzic, Vladan
World Wide Web; Semantic web; Knowledge representation; Ontologies; Petri nets
The paper presents the Petri net ontology that enables sharing Petri nets on the Semantic Web. Previous work on formal methods for representing Petri nets mainly defines tool-specific descriptions or formats for model interchange. However, such efforts do not provide a suitable description for using Petri nets on the Semantic Web. This paper uses the Petri net UML model as a starting point for implementing the ontology. Resulting Petri net models are represented on the Semantic Web using XML-based ontology languages, RDF and OWL. We implemented a Petri net tool, P3, which can be used as a knowledge acquisition tool based on the Petri net ontology. (Author abstract)
2006, v. 19, n. 5
Reusing JessTab rules in Protege.
Corsar, D.; Sleeman, D.
Knowledge management; Knowledge representation; Ontologies; Software; JESS; JessTab; Protégé
Protege provides a complete ontology and knowledge base management tool. Along with JESS, JessTab provides one method of rule-based reasoning over a Protege ontology and knowledge base. However, once JessTab rules have been created for a knowledge base, they are explicitly tied to it as they name particular classes and slots, which greatly hinders their reuse with further knowledge bases. We have developed a two-phase process and a supporting tool to support the reuse of JessTab rule sets. The first phase involves changing the class and slot references in the rule set into an abstract reference; the second phase involves automatically mapping between the abstract rules and further knowledge bases. Once mappings have been defined and applied for all the classes and slots in the abstract rules, the new rule set can then be run against the new knowledge base. We have satisfactorily tested our tool with several ontologies and associated rule sets; moreover, some of these tests have identified possible future improvements to the tool. (Author abstract)
The semantic web as a linguistic resource: opportunities for natural language generation.
Mellish, Chris; Sun, Xiantang
Computerized information storage and retrieval; World Wide Web; Semantic web; Searching; Natural language processing; Ontologies
This paper argues that, because the documents of the semantic web are created by human beings, they are actually much more like natural language documents than theory would have us believe. We present evidence that natural language words are used extensively and in complex ways in current ontologies. This leads to a number of dangers for the semantic web, but also opens up interesting new challenges for natural language processing. This is illustrated by our own work using natural language generation to present parts of ontologies. (Author abstract)
Collaborative recommending using formal concept analysis.
du Boucher-Ryan, Patrick; Bridge, Derek
Computer applications; Expert systems; Knowledge representation; Ontologies; Filtering software; Concept analysis; Recommendation systems; Collaboration
We show how Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) can be applied to Collaborative Recommenders. FCA is a mathematical method for analysing binary relations. Here we apply it to the relation between users and items in a collaborative recommender system. FCA groups the users and items into concepts, ordered by a concept lattice. We present two new algorithms for finding neighbours in a collaborative recommender. Both use the concept lattice as an index to the recommender’s ratings matrix. Our experimental results show a major decrease in the amount of work needed to find neighbours, while guaranteeing no loss of accuracy or coverage. (Author abstract)
On the use of OBDDs in model-based diagnosis: an approach based on the partition of the model.
Torta, Gianluca; Torasso, Pietro
Computer applications; Diagnosis; Expert systems; Knowledge representation; Ontologies; Mathematical models
In this paper, we discuss how Ordered Binary Decision Diagrams (OBDDs) can be exploited for the computation of consistency-based diagnoses in model-based diagnosis. Since it is not always possible to efficiently encode the whole system model within a single OBDD, we propose to build a set of OBDDs, each one encoding a portion of the original model. For each portion of the model, we compute an OBDD encoding the set of local diagnoses; the OBDD encoding global diagnoses is then obtained by merging all the local-diagnoses OBDDs. Finally, minimal-cardinality diagnoses can be efficiently computed and extracted. The paper reports formal results about soundness, completeness and computational complexity of the proposed algorithm. Thanks to the fact that encoding diagnoses is in general much simpler than encoding the whole system model, this approach allows for the successful computation of global diagnoses even if the system model could not be compiled into a single OBDD. This is exemplified referring to a challenging combinatorial digital circuit taken from the ISCAS85 benchmark. (Author abstract)
2006, v. 19, n. 7
Ontology languages for the semantic web: A never completely updated review .
Pulido, J. R. G.; Ruiz, M.A.G.; Herrera, R.; Cabello, E.; Legrand, S.; Elliman, D.
World Wide Web; Semantic web; Knowledge representation; Ontologies
This paper gives a never completely account of approaches that have been used for the research community for representing knowledge. After underlining the importance of a layered approach and the use of standards, it starts with early efforts used for artificial intelligence researchers. Then recent approaches, aimed mainly at the semantic web, are described. Coding examples from the literature are presented in both sections. Finally, the semantic web ontology creation process, as we envision it, is introduced. (Author abstract)
2006, v. 19, n. 8
Ontology based text indexing and querying for the semantic web .
Köhler, Jacob; Philippi, Stephan; Specht, Michael; Rüegg, Alexander
Online information retrieval; World Wide Web; Semantic web; Searching; Ontologies
This publication shows how the gap between the HTML based internet and the RDF based vision of the semantic web might be bridged, by linking words in texts to concepts of ontologies. Most current search engines use indexes that are built at the syntactical level and return hits based on simple string comparisons. However, the indexes do not contain synonyms, cannot differentiate between homonyms (‘mouse’ as a pointing vs. ‘mouse’ as an animal) and users receive different search results when they use different conjugation forms of the same word. In this publication, we present a system that uses ontologies and Natural Language Processing techniques to index texts, and thus supports word sense disambiguation and the retrieval of texts that contain equivalent words, by indexing them to concepts of ontologies. For this purpose, we developed fully automated methods for mapping equivalent concepts of imported RDF ontologies (for this prototype WordNet, SUMO and OpenCyc). These methods will thus allow the seamless integration of domain specific ontologies for concept based information retrieval in different domains. To demonstrate the practical workability of this approach, a set of web pages that contain synonyms and homonyms were indexed and can be queried via a search engine like query frontend. However, the ontology based indexing approach can also be used for other data mining applications such text clustering, relation mining and for searching free text fields in biological databases. The ontology alignment methods and some of the text mining principles described in this publication are now incorporated into the ONDEX system http://ondex.sourceforge.net/ (Author abstract)
2007, v. 20, n. 1
DR-BROKERING: a semantic brokering system.
Antoniou, Grigoris; Skylogiannis, Thomas; Bikakis, Antonis; Doerr, Martin; Bassiliades, Nick
Intelligent agents; Ontologies; Semantic analysis; Electronic commerce
In this paper we study the brokering and matchmaking problem, that is, how a requester’s requirements and preferences can be matched against a set of offerings collected by a broker. The proposed solution uses the Semantic Web standard of RDF to represent the offerings, and a deductive logical language for expressing the requirements and preferences. We motivate and explain the approach and architecture we propose, and report on a system implementing the described functionality in a multi-agent environment. Finally, we experimentally evaluate the core reasoning engine of the system. (Author abstract)
Dynamic evolutions based on ontologies.
Ma, Yinglong; Jin, Beihong; Feng, Yulin
Semantic web; Fuzzy logic; Knowledge management
With the continuous changes in application requirements of the enterprises, Web resources must be updated, so do the underlying ontologies that are associated with the Web resources. In the situation, it is very challenging for ontological engineers to specify the changes of ontologies, keep their consistencies and achieve semantic query of Web resources based on the evolving ontologies. We propose a construct called Prioritized Knowledge Base (PKB) based on SHOQ(D) description logic, and discuss some properties of PKB. PKB can be used for describing the evolutions and updates of ontologies with conflicting information. Furthermore, we develop some algorithms for checking conflict rules and performing semantic query based on PKB. (Author abstract)
Approximate information retrieval based on multielement bounds.
Lu, Jianjiang; Kang, Dazhou; Zhang, Yafei; Li, Yanhui
Descriptors: Online information retrieval; Ontologies
Ontology-based information systems can offer precision and effective information retrieval but suffer from the problem of ontology heterogeneity. Approximate information filtering approaches use approximations of concepts to solve this problem. Current methods only consider one-to-one concept subsumption relations, so cannot yield the closest approximations of concepts. No effective algorithm has been previously reported to find the closest approximations of concepts. This paper defines multielement least upper bounds and multielement greatest lower bounds that contain disjunctions or conjunctions of concepts. The approximations based on them are proved to be the closest possible approximations of concepts. Multielement bounds may contain much redundancy: this increases the expression complexity of the approximations of concepts. We also define simplified multielement bounds to remove redundancy, and provide effective algorithms to find them.
A flexible framework to experiment with ontology learning techniques.
Gacitua, Ricardo; Sawyer, Pete; Rayson, Paul
Semantic web; Natural language processing; Machine learning
Ontology learning refers to extracting conceptual knowledge from several sources and building an ontology from scratch, enriching, or adapting an existing ontology. It uses methods from a diverse spectrum of fields such as natural language processing, artificial intelligence and machine learning. However, a crucial challenging issue is to quantitatively evaluate the usefulness and accuracy of both techniques and combinations of techniques, when applied to ontology learning. It is an interesting problem because there are no published comparative studies. We are developing a flexible framework for ontology learning from text which provides a cyclical process that involves the successive application of various NLP techniques and learning algorithms for concept extraction and ontology modelling. The framework provides support to evaluate the usefulness and accuracy of different techniques and possible combinations of techniques into specific processes, to deal with the above challenge. We show our framework’s efficacy as a workbench for testing and evaluating concept identification. Our initial experiment supports our assumption about the usefulness of our approach.
PubMed Smarter: Query Expansion with Implicit Words Based on Gene Ontology
Huang, Yin-Fu; Hsu, Chun-Hao
Descriptors: Query expansion; Term frequency; Data mining; Full text databases
The biomedical literature is increasing rapidly, but most information retrieval systems for biomedicine are not what we really expect. In general, users suffer from exactly specifying what they want to the information retrieval systems, thereby getting back unsatisfied results from these systems. In this paper, we proposed PubMed Smarter that improves the effectiveness of information retrieval in PubMed. We built the word-relationship tree for biomedicine used to find implicit words. The implicit words are the ones correlative to a user query, and facilitate searching the PubMed database. Finally, we also used a fair assessment to evaluate the effectiveness of the system.
Design Issues for Knowledge Artifacts
Salazar-Torres, G.; Colombo, E.; Da Silva, F.S. Correa; Noriega, C.A.; Bandini, S.
Descriptors: Systems design; Knowledge based systems; Ontologies
The notion of knowledge artifact has rapidly gained popularity in the fields of general knowledge management and more recently knowledge-based systems. The main goal on this paper is to propose and discuss a methodology for the design and implementation of knowledge-based systems founded on knowledge artifacts. We advocate that the systems built according to this methodology can be effective to convey the flow of knowledge between different communities of practice. Our methodology has been developed from the ground up, i.e. we have built some concrete systems based on the abstract notion of knowledge artifact and synthesized our methodology based on reflections upon our experiences building these systems. In this paper, we also describe the most relevant systems we have built and how they have guided us to the synthesis of our proposed methodology.
2004, v. 31, n. 3
Levels of reality and levels of representation
Gnoli, Claudio; Poli, Roberto
Knowledge organization; Philosophy; Ontology; Knowledge representation
Ontology, in its philosophical meaning, is the discipline investigating the structure of reality. Its findings can be relevant to knowledge organization, and models of knowledge can, in turn, offer relevant ontological suggestions. Several philosophers in time have pointed out that reality is structured into a series of integrative levels, like the physical, the biological, the mental, and the cultural, and that each level plays as a base for the emergence of more complex levels. More detailed theories of levels have been developed by Nicolai Hartmann and James K. Feibleman, and these have been considered as a source for structuring principles in bibliographic classification by both the Classification Research Group (CRG) and Ingetraut Dahlberg. CRG’s analysis of levels and of their possible application to a new general classification scheme based on phenomena instead of disciplines, as it was formulated by Derek Austin in 1969, is examined in detail. Both benefits and open problems in applying integrative levels to bibliographic classification are pointed out. (Original abstract)
2004, v. 31, n. 4
“Thesaurus” and “ontology: ” a study of the definitions found in the computer and information science literature, by means of an analytical-synthetic method
Moreira, Alexandra; Alvarenga, Lidia; de Paiva Oliveira, Alcione
Information science; Computer science; Terminology; Thesauri; Ontologies
This is a comparative analysis of the term ontology, used in the computer science domain, with the term thesaurus, used in the information science domain. The aim of the study is to establish the main convergence points of these two knowledge representation instruments and to point out their differences. In order to fulfill this goal an analytical-synthetic method was applied to extract the meaning underlying each of the selected definitions of the instruments. The definitions were obtained from texts well accepted by the research community from both areas. The definitions were applied to a KWIC system in order to rotate the terms that were examined qualitatively and quantitatively. We concluded that thesauri and ontologies operate at the same knowledge level, the epistemological level, in spite of different origins and purposes. (Original abstract)
2005, v. 32, n. 1
Usability evaluation of ontology editors
Garcia-Barriocanal, Elena; Sicilia, Miguel A; Sanchez-Alonso, Salvador
Computer applications; Expert systems; Knowledge representation; Ontologies
Ontology editors are software tools that allow the creation and maintenance of ontologies through a graphical user interface. As the semantic web effort grows, a larger community of users for this kind of tool is expected. New users include people not specifically skilled in the use of ontology formalisms. In consequence, the usability of ontology editors can be viewed as a key adoption precondition for semantic web technologies. In this paper, the usability evaluation of several representative ontology editors is described. This evaluation is carried out by combining a heuristic pre-assessment with a subsequent user-testing phase. The target population is comprised of people with no specific ontology-creation skills that have a general knowledge about domain modelling. For this kind of user, current editors are adequate for the creation and maintenance of simple ontologies. Also, there is room for improvement, especially in browsing mechanisms, help systems, and visualization metaphors. (Original abstract)
2006, v. 33, n. 3
Ontologies, different reasoning strategies, different logics, different kinds of knowledge representation: working together.
Bosh, Mela
Knowledge representation; Ontologies; Indexing
The recent experiences in the building, maintenance and reuse of ontologies has shown that the most efficient approach is the collaborative one. However, communication between collaborators such as IT professionals, librarians, web designers and subject matter experts is difficult and time consuming. This is because there are different reasoning strategies, different logics and different kinds of knowledge representation in the applications of Semantic Web. This article intends to be a reference scheme. It uses concise and simple explanations that can be used in common by specialists of different backgrounds working together in an application of the Semantic Web. (Author abstract)
Opening Ontology Design: A Study of the Implications of Knowledge Organization for Ontology Design
Park, Ok nam
Systems design; Knowledge organization; Ontologies
It is proposed that sufficient research into ontology design has not been achieved and that this deficiency has led to the insufficiency of ontology in reinforcing its communications frameworks, knowledge sharing and re-use applications. In order to diagnose the problems of ontology research, I first survey the notion of ontology in the context of ontology design, based on a Means-Ends tool provided by a Cognitive Work Analysis. The potential contributions of knowledge organization in library and information sciences that can be used to improve the limitations of ontology research are demonstrated. I propose a context-centered view as an approach for ontology design, and present faceted classification as an appropriate method for structuring ontology, In addition, I also provides a case study of wine ontology in order to demonstrate how knowledge organization approaches in library and information science can improve ontology design. Adapted from the source document.
2005, v. 26, n. 4
Towards personalization in digital libraries through ontologies
Ferran, Nuria; Mor, Enric; Minguillon, Julia
Digital libraries; Customization; Distance learning; Semantic relations; Interoperability
Purpose: To describe a browsing and searching personalization system for digital libraries based on the use of ontologies for describing the relationships between all the elements which take part in a digital library scenario of use. Design/methodology/approach: Identification of all the desired functionalities and requirements that are necessary to fully integrate the use of a digital library in an e-learning environment, and the basic elements that are used to build the ontology that describes such scenario. Findings: The elements that determine the functionalities of the desired personalization system: first, the user’s profile, including navigational history and user preferences; and second, the information collected from the navigational behavior of the digital library users. Research limitations/implications: The ontology is not complete. In fact, the ontology in itself will evolve with the new apparition of desired functionalities and requirements of the personalization system. Practical implications: Such a personalization system will be very helpful to the users of a digital library to improve their experience of use. Originality/value: The use of ontologies promotes the integration of new services into existing ones, and the interoperability with other systems through the appropriate semantic web services. New system functionalities and requirements can be added by including the appropriate description into the ontology framework that defines the digital library scenario of use. (Original abstract)
Mining novel connections from large online digital library using biomedical ontologies
Hu, Xiaohua
Digital libraries; Medical information; Data mining; Semantic relations; Medicine
Purpose: The huge volume of biomedical literature provides a nice opportunity and challenge to induce novel knowledge by finding some connections among logical-related medical concepts This paper aims to propose a semantic-based knowledge discovery system for mining novel connections from large online digital libraries. Design/methodology/approach: The method takes advantages of the biomedical ontologies, MeSH and UMLS, as the source of semantic knowledge. A prototype system, Biomedical Semantic-based Knowledge Discovery System (Bio-SbKDS), is designed to uncover novel hypothesis/connections hidden in the biomedical literature. Using only the starting concept and the initial semantic relation derived from UMLS, Bio-SbKDS can automatically generate the semantic types as category restrictions for concepts. Using the semantic types and semantic relations of the biomedical concepts, Bio-SbKDS can identify the relevant concepts collected from Medline in terms of the semantic type and generate the novel hypothesis between these concepts based on the semantic relations. Findings: The system successfully replicates Dr Swanson’s famous discoveries: Raynaud disease/fish oil automatically, and generates much less intermediate concepts and spurious connections. Originality/value: The method takes full advantage of the semantic knowledge of the biomedical concepts, compared with previous approaches, our methods generate much less but more relevant novel hypotheses. Another significant advantage over other traditional approaches is that our method requires much less human intervention in the discovery procedure. (Original abstract)
Library Resources & Technical Services
2005, v. 49, n. 4
Beyond subject headings: a structured information retrieval tool for interdisciplinary fields
Denda, Kayo
Subject heading schemes; Women’s studies; Ontologies
Higher education at the start of the twenty-first century is characterized by an increasing number of interdisciplinary fields. Accordingly, the library world is grappling with several important information access issues, including the need to identify relationships within interdisciplinary topics where information is proliferating and locating appropriate resources is increasingly difficult. The relevance and usefulness of controlled vocabularies such as the Library of Congress Subject Headings in emerging interdisciplinary fields and the suitability of conventional library tools for organizing and accessing digital information are in question. This paper discusses the role an ontology representing a subject domain can play in addressing these issues and uses women’s studies as an example of an interdisciplinary field. This paper also proposes a methodology to identify ontology terms and their relationships in the field of women s studies that has potential application to other interdisciplinary fields. (Original abstract)
Beyond subject headings: a structured information retrieval tool for interdisciplinary fields
Denda, Kayo
Subject heading schemes; Interdisciplinary subjects; Knowledge representation; Ontologies
Higher education at the start of the twenty-first century is characterized by an increasing number of interdisciplinary fields. Accordingly, the library world is grappling with several important information access issues, including the need to identify relationships within interdisciplinary topics where information is proliferating and locating appropriate resources is increasingly difficult. The relevance and usefulness of controlled vocabularies such as the Library of Congress Subject Headings in emerging interdisciplinary fields and the suitability of conventional library tools for organizing and accessing digital information are in question. This paper discusses the role an ontology representing a subject domain can play in addressing these issues and uses women’s studies as an example of an interdisciplinary field. This paper also proposes a methodology to identify ontology terms and their relationships in the field of women’s studies that has potential application to other interdisciplinary fields. (Original abstract)
2004, v. 52, n. 3
Community as event
Day, Ronald E
Library and information science; Philosophy; Political philosophy; Ontology
Concepts and technologies of information and communication are discussed in the context of political philosophy and ontology. The questions of what is the meaning and sense of “information” and “communication” in modern political philosophy and what are the roles of technologies of such are discussed in regard to two notions of power and community: constitutional and constituent. The responsibility of designing and using information and communication technologies in response to an ontologically primary “social net” is discussed. One, ethical-political, role of the relation of philosophy to information is discussed. (Original abstract)
2005, v. 19, n. 2
An NLP lexicon as a largely language-independent resource.
McShane, Marjorie; Nirenburg, Sergei; Beale, Stephen
Machine translation; Semantics; Lexicons; Ontologies; OntoSem
This paper describes salient aspects of the OntoSem lexicon of English, a lexicon whose semantic descriptions can either be grounded in a language-independent ontology, rely on extra-ontological expressive means, or exploit a combination of the two. The variety of descriptive means, as well as the conceptual complexity of semantic description to begin with, necessitates that OntoSem lexicons be compiled primarily manually. However, once a semantic description is created for a lexeme in one language, it can be reused in others, often with little or no modification. Said differently, the challenge in building a semantic lexicon is describing semantics; once the semantics are described, it is relatively straightforward to connect given meanings to the appropriate head words in other languages. In this paper we provide a brief overview of the OntoSem lexicon and processing environment, orient our approach to lexical semantics among others in the field, and describe in more detail what we mean by the largely language-independent lexicon. Finally, we suggest reasons why our resources might be of interest to the larger community. (Author abstract)
Medical Informatics & The Internet in Medicine
2005, v. 30, n. 2
Representing different views of acupuncture in a single ontology
Gao, Y; Kay, S
Computer applications; Health care; Medicine; Acupuncture; Ontologies
A major challenge for health informatics is to model the health-care domain knowledge into appropriate and useful ontologies. This is difficult, and modellers tend to simplify things dramatically by ignoring the fact that the health care domain encompasses a global perspective. The influx of complementary and alternative medicines from the East to the West, or indeed the ongoing colonialization of orthodox Western medicine into other non-western traditions requires multiple paradigms of delivering treatment to be considered simultaneously, side by side. Models and specifications need to be developed to encompass this richness and represent this complex reality so as to understand what the different concepts and terms in each tradition achieve. Acupuncture is used as a test case of cross-membership between two different paradigms. Here, we briefly outline requirements and answer possible objections to our approach before illustrating how we have modelled heterogeneous domain knowledge from different cultures, and across different paradigms, within a single ontology. (Original abstract)
2006, v. 31, n. 2
A semantically enabled formalism for the knowledge management of Parkinson’s disease.
Paul, S.; Kokossis, A.; Gage, H.; Storey, L.; Lawrenson, R.; Trend, P.; Walmsley, K.; Morrison, S.; Kaye, J.; Gradwell, E.; Baker, M.
Knowledge management; Parkinson’s disease; Expert systems; Knowledge representation; Ontologies
Bio-ontology is a formal representation of biological concepts that is used in the interchange of communication between computers and humans alike. They can then be used in the formulation and retrieval of knowledge. In developing a knowledge-based system for Parkinson’s Disease, a procedure of knowledge map was used to capture and harness the intellectual resources of an organization, and new paradigms for knowledge mapping were also formulated. Knowledge bases for symptoms and drugs, physiotherapy, speech and language therapy, and dieting that affect patient care were developed. Finally, the knowledge bases were merged to form a single central repository of knowledge base. (Author abstract)
Nauchno-tekhnicheskaya informatsiya
2004, n. 5
Conceptual structure of terminology: identification and representation
Kryukov, Yu I; Shelov, S D
Terminology; Classification; Ontologies
Presents results of a computer generated representation of the conceptual structure of the terminology of different subject areas.
2005, n. 2
Model’ ontologii predmetnoi oblasti “Optimizatsiya posledovatel’nykh programm”. Opredelenie yazyka modeli strukturnykh programm. Model of the ontology of the “Optimisation of sequential programs” subject area. Definition of a language for constructing models of structural programs
Knyazeva, M A; Kupnevich, O A
Software engineering; Ontologies
Points out that programs consist of fragments, which are characterised by classes. Defines a language for mathematical modelling of the ontology of program optimisation and presents a model of the ontology. The model makes it possible to modify the language used to describe the optimised program. This is of importance for a greater understanding of the features of optimisation tools for different programming languages. Original article in Russian.
2005, n. 4
Model’ ontologii predmetnoi oblasti “Optimizatsiya posledovatel’nykh program”. Operdelenie rasshireniya yazyka modeli strukturnykh program terminami potokovogo analiza. Model of the ontology of the subject area of “Optimisation of sequential programs”. Enhancing the language of structural program models by flow analysis terms
Knyazeva, M A; Kupnevich, O A
Computer science; Ontologies
Examines the feasibility of enhancing the language of structural program models by flow analysis terms. For better understanding, the identification of suitable terms is illustrated by definitions of their role. The work has been done as part of a programme entitled “Theoretical principles of artificial intelligence systems using ontologies as a tool for scientific research” implemented by the Russian Academy of Sciences.
2005, n. 6
Glagoly interpretatsii: taksonomiya i aktsional’nye klassy. Verbs denoting interpretation: taxonomy and ontological categories
Paducheva, E V
Russian language materials; Taxonomy; Ontology
Taxonomy is one of the significant features of the National Russian Language Corpus. Discusses one of the taxonomic classes of the Russian language verbs – verbs denoting interpretation. Discusses the differences between taxonomic classes and ontological categories. Identifies a sub-class of verbs denoting interpretation, the corresponding ontological categories of which denote a “state”. Original article in Russian.
2005, n. 9
Classification of ontological properties. Ontologies and their classifications.
Kleshchev, A. S.; Shalfeeva, E. A.
Classification; Ontologies
Defines ontology as a system describing a union set of terms. Examines the essence and attributes of ontologies and discusses their classifications. Shows that ontology classifications fall into two main categories: type based and structure based classifications. Original article in Russian.
Automated development of e-commerce ontologies. Part 1. Definitions and ontology examples.
Romanov, V. P.; Bezkorovainaya, E. A.
Computer applications; Business; Transactions; Electronic money; Online payment; Electronic commerce; Ontologies
Examines the existing definitions of the term “ontology”. Explains how ontologies can be classified and outlines the areas in which ontologies can be used. These include: information retrieval (searching, ranking etc.), e-commerce (searching, trading etc.), knowledge management (searching and extracting information etc.) and portals (services management, knowledge sharing etc.). Describes the characteristic features of several ontology projects including OntoWeb, KACTUS, CommerceNet and WordNet. Original article in Russian.
2005, n. 10
Automated development of e-commerce ontologies. Part 2. Ontology description languages and technology.
Romanov, V. P.; Bezkorovainaya, E. A.
Computer applications; Business; Transactions; Electronic money; Online payment; Electronic commerce; Expert systems; Knowledge representation; Ontologies; Resource Description Framework; XML
Discusses the existing technologies supporting ontology applications such as ontology representation languages (UML, XML) and knowledge exchange languages (KIF, PIF, CDIF). Explains the features of the Resource Description Framework (RDF) which integrates a variety of applications using XML as an interchange syntax. Discusses the RQL query languages, which is used in conjunction with RDF. Outlines the objectives of the Ontolingua system, which provides a distributed collaborative environment to browse, create, edit, modify, and use ontologies. The system has been set up by the Knowledge System Laboratory. Original article in Russian.
2005, n. 11
Topical issues concerning development of e-commerce ontologies. Part 3. Automation of of e-commerce ontologies.
Romanov, V. P.; Bezkorovainaya, E. A.
Electronic commerce; Ontologies; Algorithms
Discusses the use of formal analyses of concepts as a tool for automated development of e-commerce ontologies. Presents algorithms, which make it possible to define relationships between the investigated concepts. Original article in Russian.
Classification of ontology properties. Properties of ontologies and their classifications.
Shalfeeva, E. A.
Classification; Ontologies
Discusses the essence of the concept of ontology and explains the key properties of ontologies and their classifications. Presents a universal classification system, which can be used as a starting point for assessment of ontologies and their models. Original article in Russian.
2005, n. 12
Ontology model of the subject area of “medical diagnostics”. Part 1. Informal description and determination of basic terms.
Kleshchev, A. S.; Moskalenko, F. M.; Chernyakhovskaya, M. Yu.
Computer applications; Health care; Medicine; Diagnosis; Ontologies
Presents an informal description of the ontology of the subject area of medical diagnostics of illnesses, taking into account interactions between their causes and consequences. The presented approach, which corresponds to real medical conditions in Russia, describes the dynamics of pathological processes. Presents the first part of a model of this ontology. Original article in Russian.
2006, n. 1
Klassifikatsiya svoistv ontologii. Napolnenie universal’noi klassifikatsii odnoznachno ponimaemymi svoistvami. [Ontology properties classification. Universal classification with unambiguous properties.]
Shalfeeva, E. A.
Classification; Ontologies
Discusses the basic structure of ontologies and presents a universal classification of their properties. Lists examples of concrete properties relevant to all categories, which include: comprehensiveness, validity, correctness, visibility, relevance of concepts, generality, clarity, adaptability, robustness, extendibility, expandability and stability. Original article in Russian.
2006, n. 2
Opisanie strukturnogo stroeniya organicheskikh soedinenii v modeli ontologii organicheskoi khmii. [Description of the structure of organic compounds using an organic chemistry ontology.]
Artem’eva, I. L.; Vysotskii, V. I.; Reshtanenko, N. V.
Computerized information storage and retrieval; Chemical structures; Ontologies
Presents a model of an ontology of organic chemistry. The model has seven modules, which represent the key properties of organic compounds such as structural formulae, hybridisation types, carbon structures and the links between chemical elements and their properties. Original article in Russian.
Model’ ontologii predmetnoi oblasti “Meditsinskaya diadnostika. Chast’2. Formal’noe opisanie prichinno-sledstvennykh svyazei, prichin znachenii priznakov i prichin zabolevanii. [Model of an ontology of the subject area of “Medical Diagnostics”. Part 2. Formal description of the links between causes and consequences and causes of symptoms and deseases.]
Kleshchev, A. S.; Moskalenko, F. M.; Chernyakhovskaya, M. Yu
Computer applications; Health care; Medicine; Diagnosis; Ontologies; Mathematical models
Presents a formal description of a model of an ontology of medical diagnostics. The ontology, which is close to real medical conditions, covers pathology, the dynamics of pathological processes and the effect of treatment on diseases. The model includes definitions of knowledge modelling terms. The presented approach can serve as a tool for development of artificial intelligence systems for medical diagnostics. Original article in Russian.
2006, n. 8
Proektirovanie intellektual’noi voprosno-otvetnoi sistemy dlya podderzhki raboty sluzhb biznes-analitiki. [Design of a question answering system for business analysis support.]
Ivanov, M. S.
Computer applications; Business information; Expert systems; Knowledge representation; Ontologies
Examines the principles of question answering systems and the ways these systems function. Presents a prototype of a question answering system, which has been designed as a tool for business analysis support. The system is based on the use of IBM’s Unstructured Information Management Architecture, a scaleable and extensible platform for creating, integrating and deploying unstructured information management solutions. The prototype uses the Protégé technology, which makes it possible to represent knowledge in the form of ontologies, and includes a knowledge base and a Search Processor, which works on the SearchbyQuery principle. Original article in Russian.
2007, n. 3
Kognitivniy podhod k sozdaniyu ontologiy. / Cognitive approach to ontology formation.
Gavrilova, T. A.; Voinov, A. V.
Intelligent systems; Ontologies; Cognitive aspects
The article describes an approach to the registration of human factors in intelligent systems development, based on cognitive psychology achievements – from basic gestation methods to contemporary approaches to psycho semantics.
New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia
2004, v. 10, n. 1
Embedding information retrieval in adaptive hypermedia: IR meets AHA!
Aroyo, Lora; Bra, Paul De; Houben, Geert-Jan; Vdovjak, Richard
Online information retrieval; World Wide Web; Searching; User interface; Human-computer interaction; Ontologies; Hypermedia; Semantic web
This paper concentrates on the retrieval aspect in adaptive hypermedia (AH). Traditionally, AH research concentrates on applications that are “closed”, in the sense that they assume fixed content elements. Certain applications ask for an extension of the contents considered, with data obtained through information retrieval (IR). This paper addresses this issue of “opening up” AH applications, and gives insight into research that applies techniques from IR and from the Semantic Web (SW) for the embedding of IR in AH. We look at this issue in the context of an abstract reference model (AHAM) and a concrete implementation framework (AHA!). The goal of this research is to define a framework for AH with extended IR functionality. We address the relevant issues for this framework, characterized by the application of concepts from the SW paradigm leading to an enriched notion of concept relevancy. (Original abstract)
2006, v. 30, n. 3
Making use of upper ontologies to foster interoperability between SKOS concept schemes.
Sanchez-Alonso, Salvador; Garcia-Barriocanal, Elena
Computer applications; Knowledge management; Knowledge organization; Semantic relations; Ontologies, pp. 263-277, 2006
Purpose: The purpose of this research is to introduce a mapping of the Simple Knowledge Organization Systems (SKOS) Core metadata to an ontology-based model, whose main aim is to foster the semantic interoperability of different concept schemes. Design/methodology/approach: Research objectives have been achieved through the introduction of a common ground for the definition of concepts, based on shared definitions included in widely used upper ontologies. This effort makes use of a particular upper ontology: OpenCyc, the open source version of Cyc, which is currently one of the most complete general knowledge bases. Findings: An in-depth study of the SKOS vocabulary has suggested its extension, with the aim of correcting the shortcomings related with SKOS schemes semantic interoperability. However, although such an extension would help avoid ambiguities and enable inter-thesaurus interoperability, the paper is focused on using a non-invasive contribution. Non-invasive in that the SKOS Core should not be modified as a result of this activity, but also, non-invasive in that current SKOS schemes would not require modifications. Originality/value: The use of formal representations to provide the SKOS terms with computational semantics, as well as the introduction of an intermediate ontology-based model built on the SKOS information. Although both proposals stand on one upper ontology (OpenCyc), they could be easily adapted to others, which provides an added value to this research work. (Author abstract)
Methodology for knowledge structuring in a discipline: the PuertoTerm case
Senso, Jose A; Magan-Redondo, Pedro-Javier; Faber-Benitez, Pamela; Vila-Miranda, Amparo
Knowledge organization; Ontologies
The PuertoTerm research project reports the steps taken to formalize and structure the knowledge developed within the field of coastal and ports engineering. The process used to obtain the associated terminology is described and the way in which the terminology was structured and processed is analysed. Finally, development and implementation are described, with special attention to the design of a two-dimensional information visualization interface. Adapted from the source document.
Controlled indexing languages and ontologies
Sanchez-Jimenez, Rodrigo; Gil-Urdiciain, Blanca
Semantic Web; Subject indexing; Ontologies
The main points of convergence and divergence between controlled indexing languages and ontologies, tools for knowledge organization and information retrieval in the semantic web, are described. Fundamental aspects of ontologies are presented, as well as the basic semantic and structural characteristics of traditional controlled languages. Adapted from the source document.
Onthologies and knowledge organization: challenges and opportunities for information professionals
Garcia-Marco, Francisco-Javier
Ontologies; Knowledge organization; Internet
The emerging convergence in the field of ontologies between knowledge organization and knowledge engineering is examined in the context of the semantic web project. We describe the development of research on ontologies in library and information sciences and in other disciplines interested in ontological problems. The emergence of a research agenda on ontologies is discussed in the context of the development of the internet and, specifically, in relation to the semantic web project. Finally, some implications of this convergence for the information professional are discussed: the integration of knowledge organization into a broader transdisciplinary research arena with a very promising future, the need to clarify the role and potential contributions of the information professional, and the urgency of adequate education and training in the new standards and technologies. Adapted from the source document.
Semantic web and ontologies in document information processing
Pedraza-Jimenez, Rafael; Codina, Lluis; Rovira, Cristofol
Ontologies; Semantic web; Document management; Data processing
The lack of a well defined model of information representation on the web has produced several problems related to processing information. In an effort to resolve these problems, the W3C has proposed the semantic web project. This new scenario offers both possibilities and difficulties for the future. Special attention is given to ontologies, fundamental tools for the representation of knowledge on the semantic web. Finally, the role of library and information professionals is considered in this new context. Adapted from the source document.
And suddenly, everybody is talking about ontologies?
Sanchez-Cuadrado*, Sonia; Morato-Lara, Jorge; Palacios-Madrid, Vicente; Llorens-Morillo, Juan; Moreiro-Gonzalez, Jose Antonio
Ontologies; Thesauri; Knowledge organization
The number of papers written on ontologies has increased considerably over the last twenty years. This trend can be easily observed by searching words like “ontology” or “thesaurus” in databases. Despite this fact, there hasn’t been a consensus about the significance of this concept. The graphical representation known as ontology spectrum must have generated a lot of confusion amongst readers. In this paper we argue that this confusion is due to the mix of the various types of knowledge organization systems with distinct objectives in the same graphical representation. Thus, constructing a formal ontology for a system does not always presume an improvement, frequently it is adequate with less complex representations. Adapted from the source document.
Reusing thesauri: documentalists face the semantic web challenge
Garcia-Torres, Alberto; Pareja-Lora, Antonio; Pradana-Lopez, Daniel
Thesauri; Ontologies
A practical approach to the development of ontologies from thesauri is presented, using the Methontology methodology, which permits the use of any language developed so far for the implementation of ontologies, as well as semantic web annotations based on these ontologies. This approach is an alternative to SKOS-Core, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) approach to publication of thesauri within the semantic web. The advantage of our approach is that it provides significantly more semantic information than a thesaurus (and, hence, than does SKOS-Core). A two-level ontological architecture for domain representation is also described, consisting of a knowledge representation ontology [based on Ranganathan’s (1967) facets] for the representation of high-level relationships in the domain and a domain ontology for the description of a particular field within the domain. Adapted from the source document.
Cantabria’s Heritage Ontology
Hernandez-Carrascal, Francisca
Ontologies; Online information retrieval; Cultural heritage
Description of an ongoing project that aims to model the cultural heritage domain in an ontology, the Cantabria’s Heritage Ontology, lead by Fundacion Marcelino Botin. The ontology will contain data from different and heterogeneous sources (bibliographic records, finding aids, catalogues, etc.). The project will develop a series of applications that get the most out of the ontology, beginning by a semantic portal. The portal will provide easy and intuitive access to a huge volume of information that comes from heterogeneous sources selected by domain experts. People interested in Cantabria will be able to find with as few clicks as possible, not only the information they are interested in, but also some contextual information that complements the one the user is watching, suggesting new navigation directions, and uncovering hidden relations. The ontology has been designed based on the international standards for cultural models, such as CRM, FRBR or Dublin Core, and W3C recommendations for the semantic web. Adapted from the source document.
Development and application of an ontology for onomastic information control and retrieval in television
Caldera-Serrano*, Jorge; Sanchez-Jimenez, Rodrigo
Ontologies; Online information retrieval; Television
The development of an ontology for information control is proposed to manage visual images of and references to individuals in information management systems of television channels. Research has established precedents for the use of ontologies in the audiovisual field, providing a baseline for measuring and understanding ongoing developments. This practical approach offers a quick, straightforward solution to onomastic control in information retrieval, permitting control and development of relationships between individuals covered in the media. This creates a network of television personalities we can draw upon to improve the outcomes of retrieval processes. Adapted from the source document.
Revista Interamericana de Bibliotecologia
2006, v. 29, n. 2
Desarrollo de una ontologia en el contexto de la web semantica a partir de un tesauro documental tradicional. / Development of an ontology in the context of the semantic web: the migration of the traditional documentary thesaurus.
Guzman Luna, Jaime A.; Torres Pardo, Durley; Lopez Garcia, Alba Nubia
Thesauri; Ontologies; Information retrieval; Data migration
A thesaurus is a documentary tool that is used to catalog and retrieve information in specialized environments. In the search for better alternatives in the representation of information resources, ontologies-in the context of the semantic web-are being seen as a new means of representing the knowledge that currently exists in thesauri, now that it has been demonstrated that ontologies make it possible to improve the precision and the reutilization of all kinds of knowledge. The objective of this work is to present an option for the migration of the traditional documentary thesaurus to ontology in the environment of the semantic web, with the objective of permitting its use in document retrieval. (Author abstract)
2004, v. 46, n. 3/4
From catalogers to ontologists: changing roles and opportunities for technical services librarians
Burke, David; Rupp, Nathan
Cataloguing; Library and information science; Professional education; Ontologies; Role; Librarians; Technical services
In this presentation, Nathan Rupp discussed how the cataloging profession has evolved over the past few decades and whether Library and Information Science (LIS) programs are providing a sufficient educational background. As new formats for information resources and other technologies have developed, the tasks covered under the job title of cataloger have splintered, especially within the last ten years. Cataloging classes in LIS programs have changed, including their title, now usually called Organization of Information classes. These classes take a more generalist and theoretical approach to describing information materials, rather than simply drilling students in using MARC and AACR2. However, since these classes usually are not required and core courses absorb so many credits of the students, opportunities to take the courses are limited (let alone take additional classes to further cataloging skills). Copies of this article are available for a fee from the Haworth Document Delivery Service http: / /docdelivery@haworthpress.com. (Original abstract)
2004, n. 3
Vanhat menetelmat uuteen asuun – ontologit tuovat uutta tekniikkaa sisallonkuvailuun. Old methods into new shape – ontologies bring new techniques to subject description
Karhula, Paivikki
Internet; Bibliographic description; Ontologies; Facets; Linguistics; Cultural aspects; Classification schemes; Seminars
The Finnish Research Library Association organized a seminar on content description in April 2004. Speakers included Vanda Broughton form the University College of London, Lois Mai Chan form the University of Kentucky and Stefan Gradmann from the Hamburg University Computing Center. The seminar covered the role of facets in accessing information on the net, the viewpoint of ontologies in content description and information management, the challenges of linguistic and cultural differences, the future of classifications and the role of subject description in the net environment. Original article in Finnish.
2004, n. 8
Organizing information in a networked environment
Karhula, Paivikki
Faceted classification schemes; Ontologies; Knowledge organization; Information technology; International conferences
The articles in this issue are mainly based on the papers given in an international seminar “The Challenge of the Electronic Environment to the Organization of Knowledge” held in Helsinki in April 2004. The emphasis is on the issues related to ontologies and faceted classifications. The ideas suggest that profound changes in the approaches to subject description, organization and access are under development.
“Going semantic”?
Gradmann, Stefan
World Wide Web; Semantic web; Ontologies
Discusses the World Wide Web before the existence of the Semantic Web, the Semantic Web itself, and Semantic Web ontologies, and ontologies in library contexts.
2005, n. 5
Ontologies are changing the world picture.
Karhula, Paivikki
Computer science; Terminology; Thesauri; Ontologies
Gives a short description of a seminar on ontologies organized by FinnONTO, Common Finnish Subject Index (YSA), and other indexes that are being modified into ontologies. Globalization is one of the key words of ontologies. When thesauri are changed into ontologies, they gain new, added value. The aim is the increased connection of automation to both information storage and retrieval. In addition to browsing and word searching ontologies have brought search methods in which one can see hierarchies and associative connections in addition to search results. Original article in Finnish.
Why thesauri are not enough and ontologies are needed?
Hyvonen, Eero
World Wide Web; Semantic web; Software engineering; Thesauri; Ontologies
Presents a simple model of transforming a traditional thesaurus into a semantic web ontology. The model has been developed among other things in the development of ontologies in museums. The results of transforming into ontologies have been piloted successfully in many semantic portal projects. The model is being tested in FinnONTO project for transforming Common Finnish Subject Index into a simple ontology. Original article in Finnish.
2005, v. 12, n. 5
An ontological representation of learning objects and learning designs as codified knowledge
Sanchez-Alonso, Salvador; Frosch-Wilke, Dirk
Education; Teaching; Educational technology; Computer assisted instruction; Students; Knowledge management; Ontologies
Purpose: The aim of this paper is discussing about the similarities between the life cycle of knowledge management and the processes in which learning objects are created, evaluated and used. Design/methodology/approach: The paper describes LO and learning designs and depicts their integration into the knowledge life cycle (KLC) of the KMCI, showing the main ontological definitions required to represent the proposed integration, putting them into relation with previous research in the topic. Findings: The main points in that the “learning object” concept can be connected to existing KLC models in order to provide a more comprehensive framework for reuse-oriented e-learning and knowledge management. Originality/value: The paper describes how to integrate learning-oriented artefacts as part of the organizational context, in particular, as part of the knowledge life cycle (KLC). It also depicts the integration of a reuse-oriented e-learning framework into the KLC of the KMCI in the form of ontological definitions. (Original abstract)
Combining ontologies and peer-to-peer technologies for inter-organizational knowledge management
Stuckenschmidt, Heiner; Siberski, Wolf; Nejdl, Wolfgang
Education; Teaching; Educational technology; Computer assisted instruction; Students; Peer to peer computing; Knowledge management; Organizations; Ontologies
Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to review the characteristics of systems that combine P2P technology with explicit ontologies and assess the benefits of these technologies for inter-organizational knowledge management. Design/methodology/approach: We characterize existing technologies with respect to a number of aspects that are relevant to knowledge management on a technical level. We further provide an example of an existing system and categorize it according to the aspects. Findings: We conclude that ontology-based P2P systems are in general beneficial for distributed knowledge management systems and that the design of such systems can be guided using the aspects we distinguish. Originality/value: The paper presents the first attempt to rigorously identify and discuss the design space of ontology-based P2P systems. (Original abstract)
Strategic industrial alliances in paper industry: XML- vs Ontology-based integration platforms
Naumenko, Anton; Nikitin, Sergiy; Terziyan, Vagan; Zharko, Andriy
Information technology; Communications technology; World Wide Web; Semantic web; XML; Ontologies; Industry; Paper; Integration
Purpose: To identify cases related to design of ICT platforms for industrial alliances, where the use of Ontology-driven architectures based on Semantic web standards is more advantageous than application of conventional modeling together with XML standards. Design/methodology/approach: A comparative analysis of the two latest and the most obvious use cases (NASA and Nordic Process Industry Data Exchange Alliance) concerned with development of an environment for integration and collaboration of industrial partners, has been used as a basis for the research results. Additionally, dynamics of changes in a domain data model and their consequences have been analyzed on a couple of typical use cases. Findings: Ontology-driven architectures of a collaboration and integration ICT platforms have been recognized as more appropriate for a technical support of industrial alliances around a supply-chains with a long life cycles. Research limitations/implications: More typical cases related to changes in domain data/knowledge models and to necessity of their integration, have to be considered and analyzed in search of advantageous of ontological modeling over conventional modeling approaches. Ways of a gradual change from conventional domain models to ontological ones in ICT systems have to be studied. The significance of existing XML-based tools and the popularity of XML has to be estimated for the wide adoption of Semantic web principles. Practical implications: The modeling approach which will be used as a core for building a collaboration and integration ICT platforms has to be carefully selected. Incorrect choice (e.g. UML together with XML) can cause consequences that will be hard to reform. The paper is anticipated to facilitate faster adoption of the Semantic web approach by industry. Originality/value: The serious revision of existing and emerging domain modeling approaches has been undertaken. More unique arguments in favor of ontological modeling have been discovered. The paper is intended for serious consideration by emerging industrial alliances with regard to their choice in a core technology that will technically enable integration and collaboration between partners. (Original abstract)
Toshokan-Kai (The Library World)
2006, v. 58, n. 2
Semantic web and information organization of library community.
Watanabe, Takahiro
Networks; World Wide Web; Semantic web; Ontologies
Report from the Group Sessions of the 47th Nippon Association for Librarianship Study Conference 2006. The concept of the semantic web is explained with an examination of the elements which compose it and its significance for the organisation of materials. Concepts are managed using ontologies and related standards are being developed such as the Resource Description Framework (RDF) Vocabulary Description Language and the Web Ontology Language (OWL). Subject access can be facilitated by thesauri and other methods of concept matching. Original article in Japanese.
Tudomanyos es Muszaki Tajekoztatas
2004, v. 51, n. 5
Tezaurusz es ontologia, avagy a fogalmi ismertetojegyek generikus oroklodesenek formalizalasa. Thesaurus and ontology, or formalization of the generic inheritance of conceptual features
Ungvary, Rudolf
Retrieval languages; Ontologies; Thesauri
Discusses the background and appearance of so-called “ontologies”, employed in expert systems and databases in an attempt to provide more automated information retrieval in terms of semantics. In 2003 a proposal for their standardization was put forward (OWL). In this concluding part of a study, presents an example of the application of ontologies to thesauri and classification systems. (Original abstract)
2007, v. 54, n. 10
Ontologiak es tezauruszok csucsfogalmai. / Ontologies and their most general concepts.
Ungvary, Rudolf
Searching; Ontologies
The hierarchy of ontologies based on generic relation is described by exact logical declarations. However, generic hierarchy itself depends on philosophical views and intuition. In other words, depending on aspect and intuition it can be chosen different conceptual hierarchy. We show that in generic hierarchy of top-level concepts there are not really unsolvable differences. Which means that the second expected consequence will not be realized. Consequently: however big are the differences between the special hierarchies of the ontologies, by necessity the basis of the apparently different hierarchies is the same concept system. For comparison we used top-level concepts of universal Hungarian Thesaurus (Koztaurus) as a basis. From the results of the comparison it can be concluded that the Hungarian adaptation of the internationally developed ontologies has no significant difficulties. Adapted from the source document.
VINE: The Journal of Information and Knowledge Management Systems
Breakdowns to Breakthroughs: An Ontological Approach to Thought Loops and Growth Edges
Duffy, Karen Staib
Learning; Knowledge; Ontology
Purpose — This paper aims to focus on an ontological approach to executive coaching and transformational learning. Design/methodology/approach — The paper is largely drawn from the methodology for ontological coaching designed by Newfield Network. Concepts are applied in actual coaching examples. Findings — The paper finds that through a transformational process of reflection and deliberate change, we can create a new coherence of self to meet and transcend challenging circumstances. This is consistent with double-loop learning. Originality/value — This work explains in concrete terms and examples how the ontological approach can be applied to expand knowledge and engage in transformational learning. Adapted from the source document.
2004, v. 1, n. 2
Metadata and the Web.
Safari, Mehdi
World Wide Web; Metadata; Formats; Semantic web; Ontology; Dublin Core Format; Internet
The rapid increase in the number and variety of resources on the World Wide Web has made the problem of resource description and discovery central to discussions about the efficiency and evolution of this medium. The inappropriateness of traditional schemas of resource description for web resources has encouraged significant activities recently on defining web-compatible schemas named “metadata”. While conceptually old for library and information professionals, metadata has taken more significant and paramount role than ever before and is considered as the golden key for the next evolution of the web in the form of semantic web. This article is intended to be a brief introduction to metadata and tries to present its overview in the web. (Author abstract)
2006, v. 3, n. 3
On ontology alignment experiments.
Abolhassani, Hassan; Hariri, Babak Bagheri; Haeri, Seyed H.
Ontology; Neural networks; Semantic web; Semantic relations; Similarity measures; Online information retrieval; World Wide Web
Ontology alignment is a process for finding related entities of different ontologies. This paper discusses the results of our research in this area. One of them is a formulation for a new structural measure which extends famous related works. In this measure with a special attention to the transitive properties, it is tried to increase recall with less harm on precision. Second contribution is a new method for compound measure creation without any need to the mapping extraction phase. Effectiveness of these ideas is discussed and quantitative evaluations are explained in this paper. (Author abstract)
2007, v. 4, n. 2
Overview of ontology servers research.
Nazir Ahmad, Mohammad
Ontology; Information systems
An ontology is increasingly becoming an essential tool for solving problems in many research areas. The ontology is a complex information object. It can contain millions of concepts in complex relationships. When we want to manage complex information objects, we generally turn to information systems technology. An information system intended to manage ontology is called an ontology server. The ontology server technology is at the time of writing quite immature. Therefore, this paper reviews and compares the main ontology servers that have been reported in the literatures. As a result, we point out several research questions related to server technology. (Author abstract)
Zagadnienia Informacji Naukowej
2004, v. 2, n. 84
Ontologies in information systems.
Nahotko, Marek
Information communication; Intelligence; Concept analysis
The article presents problems of research and design of ontologies in domain of an artificial intelligence. The term “ontology” comes from philosophy. In information science it is defined as formal specification of common conceptualisation. The scope and types of ontologies are described, and their application in information systems, regarding different stages of its usage. The CYC ontology was presented as the example. Original article in Polish. (Author abstract)