Selecting an ontology methodology for developing ontology

1
votes

My question is that is it mandatory to follow any ontology methodology while developing an ontology?

As per my understandings:

  1. You can develop an ontology without following any specific methodology
  2. You can strictly follow an ontology methodology according to your need/context of your ontology/project.
  3. Instead of strictly following, you can partially/ loosely follow an ontology methodology according to your need/context of your ontology/project
  4. You can even merge steps from multiple ontologies according to your need/context of your ontology/project.
  5. One cannot say that one methodology (i.e NeOn Methodology) is better than another one. you can select any methodology according to your need.
  6. Ontology Development Guidelines and Methodology are same things.

Please comment/guide me point by point. Thanks.

3
owlsemantic-webontologymethodology
How could it be mandatory? – unor
That’s not what I mean. I wonder what you mean with "mandatory". Who or what could mandate how you build your ontology? – unor
@unor . Maybe Syed is saying "mandatory" in the sense that what you're making is no longer an ontology, but a pizza. – xtian

3 Answers

5
votes

Here are some examples of scientific papers about ontologies construction. These are not "mandatory" but good guidelines indeed.

Kolas, D., Dean, M., & Hebeler, J. (2006). Geospatial Semantic Web: Architecture of Ontologies (p. 1‑10). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/AERO.2006.1656068

Denaux, R., Dolbear, C., Hart, G., Dimitrova, V., & Cohn, A. G. (2011). Supporting domain experts to construct conceptual ontologies: A holistic approach. Web Semantics: Science, Services and Agents on the World Wide Web, 9, 113‑127. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.websem.2011.02.001

Tan, H., Adlemo, A., Tarasov, V., & Johansson, M. E. (2017). Evaluation of an Application Ontology. In CEUR Workshop Proceedings (Vol. 2050). Bolzano, Italy.

2
votes

There is nothing mandatory about how to develop an ontology. However, people have found pitfalls and repeating patterns, hence some methodologies have been developed.

Which one is best for your objectives is very dependent on your objectives. There can be no absolute, general rule.

1
votes

It depends on the user which method of ontology the user wants to implements. As long as theres no duplication and the data quality is maintained its good to produce and implement.