Determining Fitness-For-Use of Ontologies through Change Management, Versioning and Publication Best Practices Patrick West 1 Stephan Zednik 1 Linyun Fu 1 Marshall Ma 1 Peter Fox 1 ( 1 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute th St., Troy, NY, United Poster: IN41C-1708 Glossary: RPI – Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute TWC – Tetherless World Constellation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Acknowledgments: Deborah L. McGuinness and Jim Hendler, authors and innovators of the Semantic Web and Ontology Development Sponsors: There is a large and growing number of domain ontologies available for researchers to leverage in their applications. When evaluating the use of an ontology it is important to not only consider whether the concepts and relationships defined in the ontology meet the requirements for purpose of use, but also how the change management, versioning and publication practices followed by the ontology publishers affect the maturity, stability, and long-term fitness-for-use of the ontology. In this presentation we share our experiences and a list of best practices we have developed when determining fitness for use of existing ontologies, and the process we follow when developing of our own ontologies and extensions to existing ontologies. Our experience covers domains such as solar terrestrial physics, geophysics and oceanography; and the use of general purpose ontologies such as those with representations of people, organizations, data catalogs, observations and measurements and provenance. We will cover how we determine ontology scope, manage ontology change, specify ontology version, and what best practices we follow for ontology publication and use. The implications of following these best practices is that the ontologies we use and develop are mature, stable, have a well-defined scope, and are published in accordance with linked data principles. Abstract Change Management Versioning Publication Why is this important? Meaning, Perspective, Understanding It is important to clearly define concepts and relationships in an ontology. When an group decides to use an ontology it is because the meanings of the concepts and relationships meet their needs. More importantly the ontology meets the end user’s understanding within their specific context. To change any one of the concepts, the meaning of the concepts or the relationships between the concepts, has the potential to alter the semantics enough so that it no longer meets the needs, perspective or understanding of the end users. For these reason it is important to manage change of ontologies responsibly with the needs of the end user in mind. Documenting changes to ontologies Ontology Change Proposal Template: Example Ontology Change Proposal: Adding new Concepts and Relationships This one seems the easiest. But, if a concept or relationship added to the ontology changes the meaning of the ontology itself then this can be a problem for users of your ontology. For example, for the PROV-O ontology you start adding concepts and relationships around trust values, but you already are using an ontology for this. Another example, the ToolMatch group adds inheritance assertions in their ontology to the DOAP ontology, but an end user doesn’t wish to use the DOAP ontology. Changing the meaning Rather than changing the meaning of a concept or relationship, a new concept or relationship should be created, especially if the current concept or relationship is in use by you or users of your ontology, software or services. Question of Deletion Should a concept or relationship between concepts ever be deleted? That’s a very good question that requires more space than available here. Let’s discuss it. From our experience deleting of a concept or relationship between concepts is not recommended Minor number increment Relationship between concepts is changed but does not impact the meaning of the concepts involved Revision number increment Minor modification to the description of a concept or relationship that does not change its meaning Typo corrections in concept or relationship names Typo corrections in description of concepts or relationships Example Ontology Ontology annotations provided Ontology name Description Publishing organization Creators Contributors Contact information Version information License Information Concept and Relationships clearly defined Name is representative of meaning Description is clear and detailed URI of the ontology should be resolvable Provide a link to the latest version Users might not be ready for your changes, so need to keep older versions of the ontology available. Content negotiation enabled for different format requests HTML TTL N3 JSON-LD RDF/XML Citation should be provided West, P., Patton, E. Tetherless World Ontology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 2015Tetherless World Ontology Version of an ontology consists of the same three components of a software version. Major, minor and revision Major number increment Class hierarchy is changed Meaning of a concept is changed Meaning of a relationship is changed New relationship between concepts that changes the meaning of the concepts involved