Can Conceptual Domains be Ontologized (1)

The Research Questions (RQ) arising from today’s discussion are
A – Can conceptual domains be Ontologized?
We need to define what we mean by:
• Conceptual Domain (2)
• Ontologize
Need to answer the question, ‘Are there certain domain characteristics that help/hinder ontology development in that particular domain?’
• We can answer this by finding such characteristics and show them by building an ontology.
• Primary IC would be the domain characteristics, while further IC would be the IS ontology (artifact) as developed in response to RQ - B.

B – IS Security Ontology Development using Prototyping/Design Science (DS) approach:
Where there are no Yes/No issues and IC is clearly visible at an artifact (3)
Need to find DS arguments from literature and use them to defend the approach.

C – Ontology Acceptance (on lines of Technology Acceptance)• Why ontologies are not seen in many/every domain.
• Primarily used in Medicine/Gene – i.e. Applied domains
• Finding out reasons what ontologies are popular in certain domains …

Need to find out
1. what ontologies are out there?,
2. for which domains?
3. who has made them?
4. why did they make them?
5. are they being used?
6. how are they being used?


Ontologies’ domains
1. Life Scineces
2. BioMedical




Ontologies
GFO-Bio: A biological core ontology - Robert Hoehndorf,
OntoPneumo: An ontology of pneumology domain - Audrey Baneyx
BioPAX
The bio-zen plus ontology - Matthias Samwald
The RNA Ontology (RNAO): Robert Hoehndorf,

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(1) on•tol•o•gize
verb \än‧ˈtäləˌjīz\ : to convert into ontological entities or express ontologically - Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary - http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ontologize

(2) A conceptual domain is "a coherent area of conceptualization relative to which semantic units may be characterized" (Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, 488). Langacker, R. W. (2002, ©1987). Foundations of cognitive grammar. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press..
For details go to Appendix - A

(3) “Ontologies are design artifacts, to which quality notions like appropriateness, coverage, efficiency, sustainability, and elegance apply. Classical approaches to assess the quality of ontologies mostly involve automatic metrics on the structure of ontologies, unit tests, or the manual assessment by domain experts, ontology experts or users, normally using formal, objective criteria” Mathieu D'Aquin (2009) in CFP Beautiful Ontologies, a special issue of Applied Ontology, http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-lod/2009May/0274.html

Things Seem to Getting Set to 'Get Going'

It’s getting close to the time of actual doing … So I have to give a talk on “Can Conceptual Domains be Ontologized?” - kind of informal PhD Proposal Defense. The invitees to include PGRC Members and everone that may like to attend just because the title of the talk sounds so interesting :-) …

I would rather have in on 26 or 28 of November 2011 ... that means only about a week to prepare … I better put all the stuff together, so help me God!

Ontology Desing - Issues with Bottom-up approach

Ontology designing is not a trivial task. It was found that the reason Blanco was not able to unify and make an integrated security ontology was due to the fact that he was using the existing ontologies ... The problem with them is that all of these were pretty detailed and ... starting at the bottom and consolidating ideas into fewer core concepts as one moves up is not easy as spotting the commonality between related concepts with very fine details behind them is neither intuitive nor easy (Ch-3) ... So we ought to go a different route ...

We have to develop our own IS ontology from the scratch ... Thus, a renewed focus on tools of the trade ... 5-7 tools seem to be available (Ch-3) but they are linked to certain methodologies and if we decide to use any of these then we would have to somehow conform to that methodology ...

The sequence of steps of going about developing the ontology have to be written down in sufficient details with a measurability - i.e. when could it be concluded that the step in complete ... On the same pattern as Milton's 47 steps (Ch-3, Methodology 13) ...

Knowledge sources to include research papers, IS tools (SW & HW) brochures, IS training manuals and teaching materials ... IS blogs that discuss various security issues - this last source is very interesting as these not considered as authentic/reliable sources by many but from Information Systems perspective and societal wisdom is one of the key source and must be put to use ...

So the tasks for this week are to ...
1. Re-read Chapter 3 in detail for a more fruitful discussion
2. Continue search for more ontologies ...
3. Continue search for knowledge extraction and ontology development tools
4. Down load them and try them out
5. 1st Cut Proposal ... This I guess is the most important one to get going at ...

Tasks for next week

1. Blog all the previous impressions and important points of discussions.
2. Reading Ch-3 of 'Leagal Ontology Engineering'.
3. Collecting IS Ontology examples.
4. Try to install Protege.

My First Impression: