Merging Top Level Ontologies for Scientific Knowledge Management
John K. C. Kingston · 2002
A group of researchers from the EPSRC-sponsored Advanced Knowledge Technologies (AKT) project had independently developed four different ontologies covering the same domain: scientific knowledge management (academics, papers, conferences, etc). A reference ontology was developed to allow communication between these four ontologies. It was proposed that the reference ontology would benefit from incorporating the top level of the OntoClean ontology (Gangemi et al, 1998) because of the meta-properties that this ontology uses to support ontology structuring decisions. A merged ontology structure is proposed and the issues that arise in the merging process are analysed and discussed. communication device between a group of researchers working in the same field, while applying techniques, tools and principles for ontology development. A workshop was held where each of the top level concepts was discussed individually, with the aim of determining its superclasses, subclasses and slots within the reference ontology. Inputs to the discussion included the definitions of concepts in the four existing ontologies; definitions of concepts in other respected ontologies (e.g. the IEEE Standard Upper Ontology); a discussion document which suggested some principles for ontological allocation, based on the proposed OntoClean approach of Guarino (Gangemi et al, 1998) and on the Cyc upper ontology (Cycorp, 2001); and the experience of the various participants. The resulting concept definitions were then built into a reference ontology. After the reference ontology had been published internally, a discussion ensued between the participants in the workshop regarding the best top level structure of the ontology. This paper proposes a revision to the reference ontology to include the OntoClean top level ontology, in order to allow the use of OntoClean's ontology structuring principles in further development of the reference ontology. This paper therefore discusses the structure and underlying principles of OntoClean; looks at the structure of the reference ontology; then considers the issues raised in merging the two. The OntoClean ontology