Ontology engineering methodologies for the evolution of living and reused ontologies: status, trends, findings and recommendations

Abstract

Abstract The aim of this critical review paper is threefold: (a) to provide an insight on the impact of ontology engineering methodologies (OEMs) to the evolution of living and reused ontologies, (b) to update the ontology engineering (OE) community on the status and trends in OEMs and of their use in practice and (c) to propose a set of recommendations for working ontologists to consider during the life cycle of living, evolved and reused ontologies. The work outlined in this critical review paper has been motivated by the need to address critical issues on keeping ontologies alive and evolving while these are shared in wide communities. It is argued that the engineering of ontologies must follow a well-defined methodology, addressing practical aspects that would allow (sometimes wide) communities of experts and ontologists to reach consensus on developments and keep the evolution of ontologies ‘in track’. In doing so, specific collaborative and iterative tool-supported tasks and phases within a complete and evaluated ontology life cycle are necessary. This way the engineered ontologies can be considered ‘shared, commonly agreed and continuously evolved “live” conceptualizations’ of domains of discourse. Today, in the era of Linked Data and Knowledge Graphs, it is more necessary than ever not to neglect to consider the recommendations that OEMs explicitly and implicitly introduce and their implications to the evolution of living ontologies. This paper reports on the status of OEMs, identifies trends and provides recommendations based on the findings of an analysis that concerns the impact of OEMs to the status of well-known, widely used and representative ontologies.