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What Is an Ontology?

In: Handbook on Ontologies

Author

Listed:
  • Nicola Guarino

    (Laboratory for Applied Ontology)

  • Daniel Oberle

    (CEC Karlsruhe)

  • Steffen Staab

    (ISWeb)

Abstract

Summary The word “ontology” is used with different senses in different communities. The most radical difference is perhaps between the philosophical sense, which has of course a well-established tradition, and the computational sense, which emerged in the recent years in the knowledge engineering community, starting from an early informal definition of (computational) ontologies as “explicit specifications of conceptualizations”. In this paper we shall revisit the previous attempts to clarify and formalize such original definition, providing a detailed account of the notions of conceptualization and explicit specification, while discussing at the same time the importance of shared explicit specifications.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicola Guarino & Daniel Oberle & Steffen Staab, 2009. "What Is an Ontology?," International Handbooks on Information Systems, in: Steffen Staab & Rudi Studer (ed.), Handbook on Ontologies, pages 1-17, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:ihichp:978-3-540-92673-3_0
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-92673-3_0
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Nguyen Hoang Thuan & Pedro Antunes & David Johnstone, 2018. "A Decision Tool for Business Process Crowdsourcing: Ontology, Design, and Evaluation," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 285-312, April.
    2. Jan Schweikert & Karl-Uwe Stucky & Wolfgang Süß & Veit Hagenmeyer, 2023. "A Photovoltaic System Model Integrating FAIR Digital Objects and Ontologies," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(3), pages 1-21, February.
    3. Xingsi Xue & Qi Wu & Miao Ye & Jianhui Lv, 2022. "Efficient Ontology Meta-Matching Based on Interpolation Model Assisted Evolutionary Algorithm," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 10(17), pages 1-20, September.
    4. Hai Zhu & Xingsi Xue & Hongfeng Wang, 2022. "Matching Ontologies through Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm with Relevance Matrix," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-12, June.
    5. Xixi Zhu & Bin Liu & Cheng Zhu & Zhaoyun Ding & Li Yao, 2023. "Approximate Reasoning for Large-Scale ABox in OWL DL Based on Neural-Symbolic Learning," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-24, January.
    6. R. B. K. Brown & G. Beydoun & G. Low & W. Tibben & R. Zamani & F. García-Sánchez & R. Martinez-Bejar, 2016. "Computationally efficient ontology selection in software requirement planning," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 349-358, April.
    7. Salvatore F. Pileggi & Marius Indorf & Ayman Nagi & Wolfgang Kersten, 2020. "CoRiMaS—An Ontological Approach to Cooperative Risk Management in Seaports," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(11), pages 1-23, June.
    8. Parastoo Delgoshaei & Mohammad Heidarinejad & Mark A. Austin, 2022. "A Semantic Approach for Building System Operations: Knowledge Representation and Reasoning," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(10), pages 1-18, May.
    9. Greig Charnock & Hug March & Ramon Ribera-Fumaz, 2021. "From smart to rebel city? Worlding, provincialising and the Barcelona Model," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(3), pages 581-600, February.

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