Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering. Received July 24, 2013; Accepted manuscript posted May 2, 2014. doi:10.1115/1.4027582 Copyright (c) 2014 by ASME Ontological Conceptualization Based on the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) Farhad Ameri Department of Engineering Technology Texas State University Tel: 512-245-1984 Email:
[email protected] Boonserm Kulvatunyou Systems Integration Division National Institute of Standards and Technology Tel: 301-975-2720 Email:
[email protected] Nenad Ivezic Systems Integration Division National Institute of Standards and Technology Tel: 301-975-3536 Email:
[email protected] Copyedited Khosrow Kaikhah Department of Computer Science Not Texas State University Tel: 512-245-3666 Email:
[email protected] Abstract: Ontological conceptualization refers to the process of creating an abstract view of the domain of interest through a set of interconnected concepts. In this paper, a thesaurus-based methodology is proposed for systematic ontological conceptualization in the manufacturing domain. The methodology has three main phases, namely,Manuscript thesaurus development, thesaurus evaluation, and thesaurus conversion and it uses Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) as the thesaurus representation formalism. The concept-based nature of a SKOS thesaurus makes it suitable for identifying important concepts in the domain. To that end, novel thesaurus evaluation and thesaurus conversion metrics that exploit this characteristic are presented. The ontology conceptualization methodology is demonstrated through the development of a manufacturing thesaurus, referred to as ManuTerms. The conceptsAccepted in ManuTerms can be converted into ontological classes. The whole conceptualization process is the stepping stone to developing more axiomatic ontologies. Although the proposed methodology is developed in the context of manufacturing ontology development, the underlying methods, tools, and metrics can be applied to development of any domain ontology.