%0 Journal Article %1 gruber95 %A Gruber, T. %D 1995 %J International Journal of Human-Computer Studies %K ontology %N 5-6 %P 907--928 %T Towards principles for the design of ontologies used for knowledge sharing %U http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~nernst/papers/gruber-principles.pdf %V 43 %X Recent work in Artificial Intelligence (AI) is exploring the use of formal ontologies as a way of specifying content-specific agreements for the sharing and reuse of knowledge among software entities. We take an engineering perspective on the development of such ontologies. Formal ontologies are viewed as designed artifacts, formulated for specific purposes and evaluated against objective design criteria. We describe the role of ontologies in supporting knowledge sharing activities, and then present a set of criteria to guide the development of ontologies for these purposes. We show how these criteria are applied in case studies from the design of ontologies for engineering mathematics and bibliographic data. Selected design decisions are discussed, and alternative representation choices are evaluated against the design criteria.

@article{gruber95, abstract = {Recent work in Artificial Intelligence (AI) is exploring the use of formal ontologies as a way of specifying content-specific agreements for the sharing and reuse of knowledge among software entities. We take an engineering perspective on the development of such ontologies. Formal ontologies are viewed as designed artifacts, formulated for specific purposes and evaluated against objective design criteria. We describe the role of ontologies in supporting knowledge sharing activities, and then present a set of criteria to guide the development of ontologies for these purposes. We show how these criteria are applied in case studies from the design of ontologies for engineering mathematics and bibliographic data. Selected design decisions are discussed, and alternative representation choices are evaluated against the design criteria.}, added-at = {2006-03-24T16:34:33.000+0100}, author = {Gruber, T.}, biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/2d249c2019681e6ac276ad2a19998b053/neilernst}, citeulike-article-id = {121841}, comment = {good reference for the background section on ontologies "every knowledge base, knowledge-based system, or knowledge-level agent is committed to some conceptualization, explicitly or implicitly" p 908 the set of objects represent the domain of discourse for that model "Ontologies are often equated with taxonomic hierarchies of classes, class definitions, and the subsumption relation, but ontologies need not be limited to these forms. Ontologies are also not limited to <em>conservative definitions</em>, that is, definitions in the traditional logic sense that only introduce terminology and do not add any knowledge about the world. To specify a conceptualization one needs to state axioms that do constrain the possible interpretations for the defined terms." p908 bottom "Knowledge is attributed to agents by observing their actions" in other words, the actions show you what is going on without making the knowledge representation itself explicit (tell and ask) "ontological commitments are agreements to use the shared vocabulary in a coherent and consistent manner." ontologies are designed, and gruber provides criteria for evaluating the design according to the purpose of the result, rather than notions of Truth. 1 Clarity -- effectively communicate the intended meaning of the defined terms. 2 Coherence -- sanction inferences that are consistent with the definitions 3 Extendibility -- anticipate uses of the shared vocabulary and specify new terms without requiring revision 4 Minimal encoding bias -- specification at the knowledge level e.g. not insisting on SI units 5 Minimal ontological commitment -- make as few claims as possible about the world being modeled. - the 2 examples really help one understand some of the technical issues behind ontology design "Since commitment to an ontology does not require completeness of inference, agents can 'understand' the conditions under which a value exists (e.g. a magnitude in some unknown unit) without knowing how to compute the value. This makes it possible to capitalize on the service of 'mediator' agents to translate.." p 919 - see detailed case study of bibliography ontology, in particular what gets modeled as a class and what is a type - sometimes the ontology design seems a little unconcerned with the issues of user differences -- takes little notice The difference with doing this bib as a DB is that we are modeling at the knowledge level and seeking to minimize our use of specific encodings (bias). We say that a document is published at a certain time point rather than 'book published on march 1993' - for example, we can now use Chinese calendar with it. "central design decision: to define conceptual entities described by the data, rather than just specifying the data" allows one to specify integrity constraints on the concept, rather than per object encoding bias is what happens when we encode artifacts in the model that aren't in the world e.g. a notion of gregorian dates does not exist in natural senses, only a flow of time "... for the ontologies discussed in this paper, which specify a common conceptualization for knowledge sharing among programs, whether the conceptualization is a good model of the world was not the dominant criterion. In any case, an ontology is only a specification, and the utility of an ontology ultimately depends on the utility of the theory it represents" p 925}, description = {sdasda}, interhash = {a24359ff0a6dc48b39c3fe9ebd230d11}, intrahash = {d249c2019681e6ac276ad2a19998b053}, journal = {International Journal of Human-Computer Studies}, keywords = {ontology}, number = {5-6}, pages = {907--928}, priority = {0}, timestamp = {2006-03-24T16:34:33.000+0100}, title = {Towards principles for the design of ontologies used for knowledge sharing}, url = {http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~nernst/papers/gruber-principles.pdf}, volume = 43, year = 1995 }