Lights and shadows in creating a glossary about ontology engineering

Abstract

This paper addresses the lack of an explicitly agreed and defined terminology in the ontology engineering field, and particularly, the need for a glossary, which consists of terms and definitions for actions when developing ontologies. The novelty of this paper lies in the precise description of a methodology for building a glossary with the processes and activities involved in ontology development as well as the relations between them (such as subtype, composition and synonym). The methodology proposed in this paper takes its inspiration from ideas taken from earlier research on methodological processes for creating multilingual terminological products and for defining a glossary in a particular domain as well as on domain knowledge organization. The description of our methodology includes the approach followed and the steps carried out, as well as the key issues that arise when the glossary was being created. So far as we are aware, this is the first attempt to normalize the terminology (denominations and definitions) of process and activities in ontology building.