Re: [ontology-summit] [ReusableContent] Reuse of Linked Data vis-a-vis R

[Gary Berg-Cross <gbergcross@xxxxxxxxx>]

Andrea.

>Another lesson that the ontology world must learn is that the fragments must be vetted, have real uses and sponsors, and not devolve to multitudes of overlapping and (sometimes) contradictory proposals.

Mark Gahegan, who is unable to easily participate in our session due to time zone differences makes a point on the absence of governance for Ontologies.  He presented these at a UCSB Vocamp and asks:

 How should ontologies be governed? and notes:

•The ontologies we create are highly contested research artefacts:

–they cannot be simply imposed on a community, or the risk of rejection is very high. 

–We need a process of open consideration, comment, revision, and hopefully, acceptance. 

•Where is the process by which a research community can comment on, update, refute, augment or maybe even accept an ontology?  

Gary Berg-Cross, Ph.D.  

gbergcross@xxxxxxxxx     

http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?GaryBergCross

NSF INTEROP Project  

http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0955816

SOCoP Executive Secretary

Knowledge Strategies    

Potomac, MD

240-426-0770

On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 4:06 PM, Andrea Westerinen <arwesterinen@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

One of the questions proposed in Track A (Common, Reusable Semantic Content) asks whether the reuse problems (and perhaps their solutions) are different in the Linked Data and ontology spaces.  

Certainly, the uses of the two technologies are different ... as Linked Data is about the "links" and supplying relatively simple semantic annotations and new links ... but ontologies come down to T-boxes (more formal class, relationship and/or axiomatic definitions) and A-boxes (instance definitions).  It is much easier to reuse small, targeted schemas that define Linked Data and various annotations (such as schema.org) than it is to reuse (typically much larger) foundational or domain-specific ontologies.  

In terms of time spent "getting up to speed", small, targeted definitions always win.  However, it is also much more likely to be able to do reasoning over (and more complex analysis of) ontologies and A-boxes.  And, one can more easily combine multiple ontologies (for example, with constructs such as OWL's sameAs, differentFrom, disjointWith, ...) than to combine (or reuse) multiple Linked Data schemas. In my experience, I have seen developers typically pick one schema and just stick with that.

Taking a lesson from the Linked Data world, I would posit that the characteristics that make Linked Data schemas more friendly and reusable could be applied to ontologies.  That would argue for:

 * Smaller, more modular, targeted ontology fragments

 * Separation of semantic (class and relationship) definitions from the axioms that prescribe them 

 * (Perhaps) Definition of a context in which the axioms apply (and the assumption that there may be more than 1 context and therefore more than one set of axioms)

Another lesson that the ontology world must learn is that the fragments must be vetted, have real uses and sponsors, and not devolve to multitudes of overlapping and (sometimes) contradictory proposals.  (I think that the biomed BioPortal community has done a good job with this.)

What do you think?

Andrea Westerinen

T: 425.891.8407

arwesterinen@xxxxxxxxx or andreaw@xxxxxxxxxxx

http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?AndreaWesterinen

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