Knowledge Mediation: A Procedure for the Cooperative Construction of Domain Ontologies

Abstract

Abstract. In order to enable knowledge sharing and reuse among software entities, artificial intelligence researchers have proposed to develop 'ontologies' as the explicit formal specifications of conceptualizations. These ontologies were normally designed by knowledge engineers who laid down the basic categories and relations for a certain domain. However, in any practical setting there will be conflicting interests which pertain to different conceptualizations of which a knowledge engineer will usually not be aware of. For this reason, we propose a three-phased ontology construction procedure in which the knowledge engineer mediates between the differing conceptions experts or users may hold about a knowledge domain. This procedure is described in detail in this paper and subsequently empirically demonstrated and evaluated in a study with 28 participants. The evaluation reveals convincing advantages of the proposed knowledge mediation procedure. We conclude that an ontology construction process is not only an engineering task but more importantly also a social process where the relevant parties for example of a work place need to be involved before successful and durable solutions can be found.

Supporting conceptualisation processes in collaborative networks: a case study on an R&D project

“…of a domain) has not been recognised at all, although some research has addressed the collaborative dimension of ontology building (see Staab et al 2001, Sure 2002, Go´mez-Gauchı´a et al 2004a, 2004b, Pinto et al 2004, de Moor et al 2006; for a complete account of those approaches). From these, the ''Knowledge Mediation Procedure'' (Aschoff 2004), Application Knowledge Engineering Methodology (AKEM) (Zhao 2005) and Human-Centered Ontology Engineering Methodology (HCOME) (Kotis and Vouros 2006) are the works that address the collaboration dimension as fundamental and develop methods and techniques that can result in some form of shared conceptualisation. Nevertheless, from this literature review, it can be concluded that the importance of supporting the collective construction of a conceptualisation is not recognised.…”

DOGMA-MESS: A Meaning Evolution Support System for Interorganizational Ontology Engineering

“…[9]) and the cooperative construction of domain ontologies (e.g. [1]). Still, although these approaches work out basic principles for cooperative ontology engineering, they do not provide community-grounded methodologies addressing the issues of relevance and efficiency of definition processes.…”

An Argumentation Ontology for DIstributed, Loosely-controlled and evolvInG Engineering processes of oNTologies (DILIGENT)

“…However, they do not present any experiences or adaptations to the IBIS model for OE. This is the focus of the work described in [11]. A three-phased knowledge mediation procedure is proposed and evaluated.…”