Journal of Internet Technology and Secured Transactions (JITST), Volume 1, Issue 4, December 2012 Building Information Science Ontology (OIS) with Methontology and Protégé Ahlam F. Sawsaa Joan Lu School of Computing & Engineering School of Computing & Engineering University of Huddersfield University of Huddersfield Huddersfield UK Huddersfield UK Abstract Inconsistencies in the structure of the domain have led to difficulties in using and sharing data at the Ontology is the backbone of the semantic web syntactic and semantic levels. Many technologies and can overcome semantic barriers. Domain offer good data-sharing solutions for the syntactic ontology provides a common understanding of the level, for example XML, but do not work effectively knowledge of a particular domain. Information at the semantic level. Ontology offers a good Science, meanwhile, is an interdisciplinary science solution for using data and sharing it at the semantic that is yet to be defined. It is necessary to develop level. Ontology is a modeling tool that provides a Ontology of Information Science (OIS) to represent formal description of concepts and their relations, as the unified domain knowledge. a foundation for semantic integration and This paper presents a representation of specific interoperability [1; 2]. domain knowledge by providing a definition, scope, In this paper, we focus on the ontology used in the and boundaries of Information Science (IS). The semantic web as a compatible independent model. methodology followed is Methontology, which is The aims of this study are as follows: based on the IEEE standard for the development of a software life-cycle process using the ontology editor to provide a visualization of the IS area Protégé. The OIS ontology has fourteen facets: to share a common understanding of IS actors, method, practice, studies, mediator, kinds, theory domains, resources, legislation, philosophy and theories, societal, tools, time and space. It provides a to describe the terminology and a conceptual broader base of classes to offer the opportunity to model of IS, including concepts, examples of enrich OIS ontology. Also, it could be a basis for them, and the relationships between them multiple ontologies to be built. OIS is structured at [17], in other words a logical model of OIS. class level and subclass but does not provide the The Ontology of Information Science OIS is a new individual level. The model was evaluated by domain research direction within the field of Information experts based on specific criteria and using the Science (IS). It provides a formal semantic FaCT++ reasoner to check the ontology usefulness, explanation for IS data. This paper is organized as and how it could be transferred into application follows: In section 2, we discuss the theoretical ontology for Information Science education. The foundations of ontology. In section 3, we describe paper then discusses the OIS ontology, particularly the method used to build the IS ontology. In section its structure and development. 4, we present its development and implementation. Section 5 contains our evaluation and discussion of Keywords: ontology, ontology engineering, the results. Section 6 concludes and presents knowledge visualization, knowledge representation, suggestions for future work. semantic web, information science 2. Background 1. Introduction The World Wide Web (www) is enormous and In recent years, ontology has received attention the semantic web is still in an early phase. The from both academic and industrial fields. The word semantic web needs semantic interoperability ontology has been defined from different between metadata connected with web information. perspectives, having originated in the field of The www needs smart tools to improve information philosophy, where it is used to mean the basic retrieval and to integrate all the information that characteristics of existence in the world. users need. So, metadata makes it easier for search Information science is a multidiscipline consisting of engines to get web pages. a number of different branches, including library science, computer science, and archival science. Nowadays, many sources of data and information Thus, it lacks a unified model of domain knowledge. are available on the Internet, and therefore it has Copyright © 2012, Infonomics Society 100 Journal of Internet Technology and Secured Transactions (JITST), Volume 1, Issue 4, December 2012 become imperative for computer scientists and IA community to facilitate information access and improve information retrieval on the Internet, by A. Ontology of Information Science (OIS) using techniques, applications and programming languages such as: Extensible Markup Language Ontology of IS facilitates data exchanging (XML), Resource Describe Framework (RDF, information integration, and search of IS data. RDFs) and Web Ontology Language (OWL). The Nowadays, ontologies have become mainstream in semantic Web provides a good opportunity for several domains. Ontology has been defined from researchers to access the required information. different perspectives, computer science and Particularly with an increase in information on the philosophy and has various definitions in the Internet, it can be said that the Semantic Web has literature [6; 7; 8; 9], The philosophical perspective revolutionized the world of search browsers on the defines ontology as the science or study of being, internet. what is existing, introduced by Aristotle [10; 11]. The semantic web is defined as “an extension of the The term has been borrowed by computer science current Web in which information is given well- and is used to represent knowledge or understanding defined meaning, better enabling computers and of the world. The Artificial Intelligence AI people to work in cooperation.” [3P580]. Its aim is to community defines the term as “a formal explicit convert a large amount of data and information specification of shared conceptualization” [12]. It is resources that are available on the internet rather defined as a specification of conceptualization. than just units consisting of (0) (bits) to Ontology represents knowledge of a specific domain understandable data by the computer programs using in the way that concepts are defined in unique specific languages mentioned above. manner and connected with relationships. Tim Berners-Lee, in his article describing the According to Gruber‘s definition, OIS is the semantic web, said it is an attempt to develop formal explanation of a shared conceptualization of languages that express information in a form the domain of IS. That is, the concepts of IS are accessible to human understanding. This brings to represented by the ontology model. More mind to ask this question: what is the importance of interestingly, IS knowledge is conceptualized into the semantic web? defined classes and relationships to make it machine Berners–Lee is correct that Google is a wonderful readable. tool for humans, but it does not serve machines, it is only understandable for humans; we also need these The OIS ontology has developed to overlap the pages and their contents to be understandable for field problematically. Information science IS has machines [4]. interdisciplinary relationships with different sciences and it needs to be determined how it will be defined. The semantic web offers semantic annotations that describe web resources explicitly. These annotations Furthermore, IS still seeking to identify its are based on ontologies that represent domain identity and boundaries against others fields, because knowledge through defining concepts and the a lack of scientific methodology and philosophy led semantic relations between those concepts. Besides it to big problems, particularly when information provides a machine processable representation of scientists attempted to establish the basic area of the ontology. The standards for this purpose have been science [13]. IS is concerned with collecting and defined by W3C, such as RDF, OWL. Ontology is a organizing information resources to be retrieved by foundation and is central to the growth of the users in information centers and libraries [1]. semantic web that provides a common knowledge for correspondence and communication among B. Theoretical foundation of OIS ontology heterogeneous systems. Furthermore, it is useful for different applications to share information among heterogeneous data resources [5]. Theories can help to define formal ontological properties that contribute to characterizing the Therefore, an ontological infrastructure to support concepts. Meanwhile, ontologists nowadays have a the semantic web has been developed. Particularly choice of formal frameworks which derive from with a rise of ontology in the artificial intelligence formal logic, as well as algebra, category theory, domain, it can be seen as an almost inevitable Mereology, set theory and Topology. The development in computer science and AI in general. methodology is based on Category Theory. In the Ontology plays an important role to use as a source interim, ontology adopts a categorical framework that of shared defined terms; such metadata can be used means it searches for what is universal in both in a specific domain. specific and general domains [14]. The ontology’s Copyright © 2012, Infonomics Society 101 Journal of Internet Technology and Secured Transactions (JITST), Volume 1, Issue 4, December 2012 meaning emerges basically from a reliance on the theory of category as a grounding of mathematics[15].