Methodology and research questions supporting ontology building

Methodology for ontology building 

This document is a first draft of an ontological modelling reference booklet desgined to aid modellers developing or extending ontologies intended to support data integration for an empirical research domain

  • Principles for Modelling Ontologies: A short reference guide
  • Version 0.2 (.docx)
  • Version 0.1.2 (.docx)
     

 

Principles for Modelling Ontologies -enhanced with use-cases of bottom-up modelling

The documents listed below form a draft of an ontological modelling reference booklet desgined to aid modellers developing or extending ontologies intended to support data integration for an empirical research domain, supplemented by a new modelling construct checklist and procedure and an example from epigraphy concerning the differentiation of polysemic concepts through instantiating them as ontological classes.

  • CM Principles Word v0.1.2 [Introduction] (.docx)
  • New Class/property checklist (.docx)
  • Polysemic Concepts Differentiated as Ontological Classes; An example from epigraphy (approved by the 55th SIG Meeting) & Figures (LINK) 

 

Guidelines for writing Scope Notes and annotated examples

Scope notes are not formal modelling constructs (e.g. they cannot be used directly for machine implementations), but are provided to help explain the intended meaning of the CIDOC CRM’s classes and properties, and where they apply. They refer to a conceptualisation commonly understood by domain experts and disambiguate between different possible interpretations. Illustrative examples of instances of classes and properties are also provided in the scope notes for explanatory purposes. 

The scope notes for classes should make sure that multiple users communicating information via a machine, rather than via clarifying dialogues, can refer to the same particular item and have a shared understanding of the item’s kind, i.e., the kinds of characteristics that it must and that it may have.
 

  • Guidelines for writing scope notes (approved by the 55th SIG Meeting) (.docx)

 

Research questions in support of ontology building

The scientific research questions listed below form an empirical source in support of the methodology observed in conceptual modeling. They  serve as a means to verify and validate modeling decisions undertaken in the course of a project, and dictate the granularity of the project data.