This study is concluded in this chapter. The research problem and questions derived from it are answered. In addition, the achievements and the limitations of this study are discussed. The research started with identifying the problem. To achieve these objectives, the OIS was designed and developed. Feedback and evaluation from the domain's experts has led to constant improvement in the ontology's development. The current version of the OIS ontology is presented in this research. At the end of this chapter, possible research leads for the future are suggested. The study aimed at the creation of OIS ontology of Information Science domain to visualise its knowledge, in order to be integrated with other ontologies to be applied for a specific application. The resulting ontology covers three main areas of domain knowledge: library science, archival science and computing science. The vocabularies of these branches are formalised in class hierarchy with relations which are interconnecting concepts from all these areas, in order to define a sufficient model of the Information Science domain.
Top1. Contributions
The main contributions in this study are presented in Figure 1, which are:
- 1.
Designing ontology of Information Science (OIS): is presented to design OIS domain ontology to visualize a specific area. The OIS contains 706 concepts. These concepts identified to provide clear definitions for classes that would be interest to the domain users and developers. Also, identify the associated attributes and characteristics of the objects with their relations. Each entity has attributes and type of relations for operating between these entities. The study intent to provide conceptual model serve as base to related specific relations and attributes. Furthermore, the research is focusing on analysis IS data to be defined in a systematic way in which way that how the information can be used.
- 2.
A new strategy of conceptual representation of the domain knowledge that supported by both human and machine.
- 3.
Developing IS taxonomy which is a novel methods to classify the domain knowledge. It describes the main concepts in a hierarchy tree. Our approach is overlapping on shortcomings of the classification systems that are widely acknowledged amongst the scientific community based on (FAS) and reinitialized previous classification schemas.
- 4.
Designing Ontocop system a novel method presented to support the developing process as specific virtual community of IS.
Figure 1. Architecture of system design approach
Top1. Achievements
The main achievement of this study is the creating a new model of OIS ontology. The OIS ontology was implemented in the process of the life cycle of ontology development, which was strongly influenced by Methontology. The creation process divided mainly into four processes: specification, conceptualisation, formalisation, and evaluation. The evaluation was essential to gather results on the produced model. The information resources were acquired manually and semi-automatically from domain’s publications, books and dictionaries, where the text analysis and annotation techniques have been used. Conceptualisation essentially relied on the identification of concepts and groups of concepts and in building specific classification trees. The knowledge model was then formalised using Protégé, and WebProtégé to use the OIS ontology; it was also used to generate the ontology code automatically. Another relevant issue was using a standard evaluation methodology to check if the ontology satisfied needs.
The OIS is a data model representing set of concepts and sets of relations that connect the concepts; each instance is restricted by some axioms.
This model aimed to provide a shared terminology among agents and specialists in the domain and to define the meaning of all concepts in an accurate manner.
Identifying a research problem and justifying its need for a solution, required devoting an artefact as a solution. The research problem of the study was defined. The research problem was solved by answering the research.
The problems that were considered were:
- •
The IS domain was too broad for the specific time of the study.
- •
Since the beginning of the 1990s ontologies have been developed without clear guidance for developers. Nevertheless, some design criteria, principles, methods and methodologies must be followed.
- •
Despite some problems we have faced, the OIS ontology has reached a usable state. The concepts of the domain were structured and documented. The ontology is currently published in WebProtégé, since that work will be used for an application of IS domain to be used in specific purposes. At the end of this study, the implemented approach was evaluated.
Top2. Future Work
For reusing, sharing, and maintenance of the OIS ontology, there are future issues that relate to our ontology that need to be considered. In the OIS module there is always space for improvement. Ontologies are changing over time, due to changes in the domain and conceptualisation, so its structure should be extensible and flexible: