Towards an ecosystem of

data and ontologies

Mathieu d’Aquin and Enrico Motta

Knowledge Media Institute The Open University

Large scale semantics on the web

• Traditional research and use of ontologies has been piecemeal:

1. develop ontology

2. annotate data with ontology

• With the explosion of ontologies and data on the web, the landscape has changed

– Thousands of ontologies are now available online, while huge quantities of data are generated all the time.

• This unprecedented scenario introduces new opportunities for both fundamental and applied research

Experience from using online ontologies

NeOn Project

Methodological and technological support for networked ontologies

– Ontology modularization, ontology design patterns, ontology alignments, ontology reuse, ontology search, ontology visualisation, ontology evolution…

Key Infrastructure Component

Watson: ontology search engine and API for exploiting available online ontologies. Used in:

– knowledge-based ontology matching– query answering, word sense disambiguation– information retrieval, semantic enrichment of

folksonomies, semantics-enhanced Web browsing, ...

Refercencesd'Aquin, Motta et al. (2008) Towards a New Generation of Semantic Web Applications, IEEE Intelligent Systemsd'Aquin et al. (2009) NeOn Tool Support for Building Ontologies by Reuse, Demo at ICBO 2009d'Aquin and Motta (2011) Watson, more than a Semantic Web search engine, Semantic Web Journal, 2

New challenges/research directions

– Automatically aligning data and ontologies to make sense

of both data and ontologies. For example:

• Enabling automatic evolution of ontologies

• Tidying up and automatically augment linked data sources

– Mapping the landscape of semantics on the web. For

example:

• Automatically identifying relations between ontologies

• Identifying and comparing different conceptual viewpoints on

the same domain– Cf. our work on measuring agreement and disagreement

– Understanding usability of ontologies through appropriate

emprical studies

References d'Aquin, M. (2009) Formally Measuring Agreement and Disagreement in Ontologies, K-CAP 2009d'Aquin and Motta (2011) Extracting Relevant Questions to an RDF Dataset Using Formal Concept Analysis, K-CAP 2011Motta et al. (2011) A Novel Approach to Visualizing and Navigating Ontologies, ISWC 2011d’Aquin et al. (2012) Combining Data Mining and Ontology Engineering to enrich Ontologies and Linked Data, to appear Know@LOD ESWC workshop

Steps forward

Need for Web-scale supporting infrastructures for online ontologies

– Ontology repositories exist, but small coverage, scope, etc.

– Need support for sustainable and accountable publishing of ontologies

– Supporting usage monitoring and appropriate re-use, including “find by example” / “find alternatives”

Need for empirical investigations of online ontologies

– Understanding the practices in knowledge representation, ontology design and ontology engineering through analyzing the large amounts of interconnected ontologies online

– Understanding the practices in using ontologies and how data and ontologies interact on the Web

References Allocca, d'Aquin and Motta (2009) DOOR: Towards a Formalization of Ontology Relations, KEOD 2009d'Aquin, Allocca, and Motta (2010) A Platform for Semantic Web Studies, Web Science 2010d'Aquin and Noy (2011) Where to publish and find ontologies? A survey of ontology libraries, Journal of Web Semanticsd'Aquin and Gangemi (2011) Is there beauty in ontologies? Applied Ontology, 6, 3