Abstract
The process of authoring ontologies requires the active involvement of domain experts who should lead the process, as well as providing the relevant conceptual knowledge. However, most domain experts lack knowledge modelling skills and find it hard to follow logical notations in OWL. This paper presents ROO, a tool that facilitates domain experts’ definition of ontologies in OWL by allowing them to author the ontology in a controlled natural language called Rabbit. ROO guides users through the ontology construction process by following a methodology geared towards domain experts’ involvement in ontology authoring, and exploiting intelligent user interfaces techniques. An evaluation study has been conducted comparing ROO against another popular ontology authoring tool. Participants were asked to create ontologies based on hydrology and environment modelling scenarios related to real tasks at the mapping agency of Great Britain. The study is discussed, focusing on the usability and usefulness of the tool, and the quality of the resultant ontologies.
The work reported here is part of a research project, called Confluence, funded by the Ordnance Survey and conducted by an interdisciplinary team from the University of Leeds and Ordnance Survey. The main goal of the project is the development of the ontology construction tool ROO, presented in this paper.
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Dimitrova, V., Denaux, R., Hart, G., Dolbear, C., Holt, I., Cohn, A.G. (2008). Involving Domain Experts in Authoring OWL Ontologies. In: Sheth, A., et al. The Semantic Web - ISWC 2008. ISWC 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5318. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-88564-1_1
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