A proposal to evaluate ontology content

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Almeida, Mauricio Barcellos

Affiliations: Information Theory and Management Department, School of Information Science, UFMG – Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brasil. E-mail: mba@eci.ufmg.br

Abstract: Research into ontologies has received much attention and has been the subject of study in different scientific communities. The current growth observed in ontology use and availability increases the importance of the evolution of methods to evaluate ontologies. There are formal methodologies available, but the evaluation of ontology content does not seem to be a main concern. We understand the evaluation of ontology content to be the activity of verifying whether the ontology really represents the knowledge of a domain, according to the assessment of experts. Our objective is to contribute to this sense. In order to do so, we present qualitative research about the content evaluation of an organizational ontology, developed within a large Brazilian energy utility company. The evaluation process consists of a set of questionnaires, which are based on a multidisciplinary approach, and of a prototype system. We believe that this proposal can contribute towards improvements in both modeling and evaluation processes in ontology development.

Keywords: Ontologies, modeling, user-centered evaluation

DOI: 10.3233/AO-2009-0070

Journal: Applied Ontology, vol. 4, no. 3-4, pp. 245-265, 2009