Ontology visualization methods—a survey

Abstract

Ontologies, as sets of concepts and their interrelations in a specific domain, have proven to be a useful tool in the areas of digital libraries, the semantic web, and personalized information management. As a result, there is a growing need for effective ontology visualization for design, management and browsing. There exist several ontology visualization methods and also a number of techniques used in other contexts that could be adapted for ontology representation. The purpose of this article is to present these techniques and categorize their characteristics and features in order to assist method selection and promote future research in the area of ontology visualization.