• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.125-155
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• 2010

Ontologies have been adopted in various business and scientific communities as a key component of the Semantic Web. Despite the increasing importance of ontologies, ontology developers still perceive construction tasks as a challenge. A clearly defined and well-structured methodology can reduce the time required to develop an ontology and increase the probability of success of a project. However, no reliable knowledge-engineering methodology for ontology development currently exists; every methodology has been tailored toward the development of a particular ontology. In this study, we developed a Graduation Screen Ontology (GSO). The graduation screen domain was chosen for the several reasons. First, the graduation screen process is a complicated task requiring a complex reasoning process. Second, GSO may be reused for other universities because the graduation screen process is similar for most universities. Finally, GSO can be built within a given period because the size of the selected domain is reasonable. No standard ontology development methodology exists; thus, one of the existing ontology development methodologies had to be chosen. The most important considerations for selecting the ontology development methodology of GSO included whether it can be applied to a new domain; whether it covers a broader set of development tasks; and whether it gives sufficient explanation of each development task. We evaluated various ontology development methodologies based on the evaluation framework proposed by G$\acute{o}$mez-P$\acute{e}$rez et al. We concluded that METHONTOLOGY was the most applicable to the building of GSO for this study. METHONTOLOGY was derived from the experience of developing Chemical Ontology at the Polytechnic University of Madrid by Fern$\acute{a}$ndez-L$\acute{o}$pez et al. and is regarded as the most mature ontology development methodology. METHONTOLOGY describes a very detailed approach for building an ontology under a centralized development environment at the conceptual level. This methodology consists of three broad processes, with each process containing specific sub-processes: management (scheduling, control, and quality assurance); development (specification, conceptualization, formalization, implementation, and maintenance); and support process (knowledge acquisition, evaluation, documentation, configuration management, and integration). An ontology development language and ontology development tool for GSO construction also had to be selected. We adopted OWL-DL as the ontology development language. OWL was selected because of its computational quality of consistency in checking and classification, which is crucial in developing coherent and useful ontological models for very complex domains. In addition, Protege-OWL was chosen for an ontology development tool because it is supported by METHONTOLOGY and is widely used because of its platform-independent characteristics. Based on the GSO development experience of the researchers, some issues relating to the METHONTOLOGY, OWL-DL, and Prot$\acute{e}$g$\acute{e}$-OWL were identified. We focused on presenting drawbacks of METHONTOLOGY and discussing how each weakness could be addressed. First, METHONTOLOGY insists that domain experts who do not have ontology construction experience can easily build ontologies. However, it is still difficult for these domain experts to develop a sophisticated ontology, especially if they have insufficient background knowledge related to the ontology. Second, METHONTOLOGY does not include a development stage called the "feasibility study." This pre-development stage helps developers ensure not only that a planned ontology is necessary and sufficiently valuable to begin an ontology building project, but also to determine whether the project will be successful. Third, METHONTOLOGY excludes an explanation on the use and integration of existing ontologies. If an additional stage for considering reuse is introduced, developers might share benefits of reuse. Fourth, METHONTOLOGY fails to address the importance of collaboration. This methodology needs to explain the allocation of specific tasks to different developer groups, and how to combine these tasks once specific given jobs are completed. Fifth, METHONTOLOGY fails to suggest the methods and techniques applied in the conceptualization stage sufficiently. Introducing methods of concept extraction from multiple informal sources or methods of identifying relations may enhance the quality of ontologies. Sixth, METHONTOLOGY does not provide an evaluation process to confirm whether WebODE perfectly transforms a conceptual ontology into a formal ontology. It also does not guarantee whether the outcomes of the conceptualization stage are completely reflected in the implementation stage. Seventh, METHONTOLOGY needs to add criteria for user evaluation of the actual use of the constructed ontology under user environments. Eighth, although METHONTOLOGY allows continual knowledge acquisition while working on the ontology development process, consistent updates can be difficult for developers. Ninth, METHONTOLOGY demands that developers complete various documents during the conceptualization stage; thus, it can be considered a heavy methodology. Adopting an agile methodology will result in reinforcing active communication among developers and reducing the burden of documentation completion. Finally, this study concludes with contributions and practical implications. No previous research has addressed issues related to METHONTOLOGY from empirical experiences; this study is an initial attempt. In addition, several lessons learned from the development experience are discussed. This study also affords some insights for ontology methodology researchers who want to design a more advanced ontology development methodology.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science
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• v.25
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• pp.343-388
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• 1993

The ability of any organization to innovate itself in a rapid change of environment means the existence of the organization. Innovative activity is achieved in different ways according to the objectives of organization. the characteristics of external environmental factors. and various attributes in organization. In the present study. all the existing approaches to the innovative nature of organization were synthetically compared to each other and evaluated: then. for a more rational approach. a research model was built and suggested by establishing the inclusive variables of the innovative nature of library organization and categorizing the types of such nature. Additionally. an empirical. analytical study on such a model was done. That is. paying regard to the fact that innovation has basically a close relation with the circumstantial factors of organization. synthetic, circumstantial relations were clarified. considering the external environmental factors and internal characteristics of organization. In the study. the innovation of library organization was seen in two parts i.e .. the feasible degree of technical innovation and the feasible degree of administrative innovation. Regarding the types of innovative implementation. according to the feasible degree of innovation, four types such as a stationary type. technic-oriented type, organization-oriented type. and technical-socio systematic type were classified. There were nine independent variables-i.e., the scale of organization. available resources of the organization, formalization, differentiation, specialization. decentralization, recognizant degree of the technical attribute. degree of response to the change of technical environment, and professional activities. There were three subordinate variables - i.e., technical innovation, administrative innovation. and the performance of organization. Through establishment of such variables, the factors which might influence the innovation of library organization were understood, and with the types of the innovative implementation of library organization being classified according to the feasible degree of innovation. the characteristics of library organization were reviewed in the light of each type. Also. the performance of library organization according to the types of the innovative implementation of library organization was analyzed. and the relations between the types of innovative implementation according to circumstantial variables and the performance of library organization were clarified. In order to clarify the adequacy of the research model in the methodology of empirical study, data were collected from 72 university libraries and 38 special libraries. and for a hypothetical test of the research model. an analysis of correlations, a stepwise regression analysis. and One Way ANOVA were utilized. The following are the major results or findings from the study 1) It appeared there is a trend that the bigger the scale of organization and available resources are, the more active the professional activity of the managerial class is, and the higher the recognizant degree of technical environment (recognizant degree of technical attributes and the degree of response t9 the change of technical environment) is, the higher the feasible degree of innovation becomes. 2) It appeared that among the variables influencing the feasible degree of technical innovation, the order from the variable influencing most was first, the recognizant degree of technical innovation: second, the available resources of organization: and third, professional activity. Regarding the variables influencing the feasible degree of administrative innovation from the most influential variable, it appeared they were the available resources of organization, the differentiation of organization. and the degree of response to the change of technical environment. 3) It appeared that the higher the educational level of the managerial class is, the more active the professional activity becomes. It seemed there is a trend that the group of library managers whose experience as a librarian was at the middle level(three years to six years of experience) was more active in research activity than the group of library managers whose experience as a librarian was at a higher level(more than ten years). Also, it appeared there is a trend that the lower the age of library managers is, the higher the recognizant degree of technical attributes becomes. and the group of library managers whose experience as a librarian was at the middle level (three years to six years of experience) recognized more affirmatively the technical aspect than the group of library managers whose experience as a librarian was at a higher level(more than 10 years). Also, it appeared that, when the activity of the professional association and research activity are active, the recognizant degree of technology becomes higher, and as a result. it influences the innovative nature of organization(the feasible degree of technical innovation and the feasible degree of administrative innovation). 4) As a result of the comparison and analysis of the characteristics of library organization according to the types of innovative implementation of library organization. it was indicated there is a trend that the larger the available resources of library organization, the higher the organic nature of organization such as differentiation. decentralization, etc., and the higher the level of the operation of system development, the more the type of the innovative implementation of library organization becomes the technical-socio systematic type which is higher both in the practical degrees of technical innovation and administrative innovation. 5) As a result of the comparison and analysis of the relations between the types of innovative implementation and the performance of organization, it appeared that the order from the highest performance of organization is the technical-socio systematic type, then the technic-oriented type, the organization­oriented type, and finally the stationary type which is lowest in such performance. That is, it demonstrated that, since the performance of library organization is highest in the library of the technical-socio systematic type while it is lowest in the library whose practical degrees in both technical innovation and administrative innovation are low, the performance of library organization differs significantly according to the types of innovative implementation of library organization. The present study has extracted the factors influencing innovation, classified systematically the types of innovative implementation, and inferred the synthetical, circumstantial correlations between the types and the performance of organization, and empirically inspected those factors. However, due to the present study's restrictive matters and the limit of the research design, results from the study should be more prudently interpreted. Also, the present study, as an investigative study of the types of innovative implementation, with few preceding studies, requires more complete hypothetical inference based on the results of the present study. In other words, if more systematical studies are given to understanding the relations, it will devote the suggestion and demonstration of a more useful theory.