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Ontology Elicitation

  • Reference work entry
Encyclopedia of Database Systems

Synonyms

Ontology acquisition; Ontology learning; Ontology argumentation; Ontology negotiation; Knowledge creation

Definition

Ontology elicitation embraces the family of methods and techniques to explicate, negotiate, and ultimately agree on a partial account of the structure and semantics of a particular domain, as well as on the symbols used to represent and apply this semantics unambiguously.

Ontology elicitation only results in a partial account because the formal definition of an ontology cannot completely specify the intended structure and semantics of each concept in the domain, but at best can approximate it. Therefore, the key for scalability is to reach the appropriate amount of consensus on relevant ontological definitions through an effective meaning negotiation in an efficient manner.

Historical Background

Ontology elicitation is based on techniques of knowledge acquisition, a subfield of AI that is concerned with eliciting and representing knowledge of human experts so...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Collibra nv, Brussels, Belgium

    Pieter De Leenheer

Authors
  1. Pieter De Leenheer
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 266 Ferst Drive, 30332-0765, Atlanta, GA, USA

    LING LIU (Professor) (Professor)

  2. Database Research Group David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. TAMER ÖZSU (Professor and Director, University Research Chair) (Professor and Director, University Research Chair)

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© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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Leenheer, P. (2009). Ontology Elicitation. In: LIU, L., ÖZSU, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_1316

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