DEMO - Design environment for metadata ontologies

Abstract

Efficient knowledge sharing and reuse - a pre-requisite for the realization of the Semantic Web vision - is currently impeded by the lack of standards for documenting and annotating ontologies with metadata information. We argue that the availability of metadata is a fundamental dimension of ontology reusability. Metadata information provides a basis for ontology developers to evaluate and adapt existing Semantic Web ontologies in new application settings, and fosters the development of support tools such as ontology repositories. However, in order for the metadata information to represent real added value to ontology users, it is equally important to achieve a common agreement on the terms used to describe ontologies, and to provide an appropriate technology infrastructure in form of tools being able to create, manage and distribute this information. In this paper we present DEMO, a framework for the development and deployment of ontology metadata. Besides OMV, the proposed core vocabulary for ontology metadata, the framework comprises an inventory of methods to collaboratively extend OMV in accordance to the requirements of an emerging community of industrial and academia users, and tools for metadata management. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.