Applied Ontology
Applied Ontology focuses on information content in its broadest sense. As the subtitle makes clear, two broad kinds of content-based research activities are envisioned: ontological analysis and conceptual modeling. The former includes any attempt to investigate the nature and structure of a domain of interest using rigorous philosophical or logical tools; the latter concerns the cognitive and linguistic structures we use to model the world, as well as the various analysis tools and methodologies we adopt for producing useful computational models, such as information systems schemes or knowledge structures.
Applied Ontology is the first journal with explicit and exclusive focus on ontological analysis and conceptual modeling under an interdisciplinary view. It aims to establish a unique niche in the realm of scientific journals by carefully avoiding unnecessary duplication with discipline-oriented journals. For this reason, authors will be encouraged to use language that will be intelligible also to those outside their specific sector of expertise, and the review process will be tailored to this end. For example, authors of theoretical contributions will be encouraged to show the relevance of their theory for applications, while authors of more technological papers will be encouraged to show the relevance of a well-founded theoretical perspective. Moreover, the journal will publish papers focusing on representation languages or algorithms only where these address relevant content issues, whether at the level of practical application or of theoretical understanding. Similarly, it will publish descriptions of tools or implemented systems only where a contribution to the practice of ontological analysis and conceptual modeling is clearly established.
Applied Ontology aims at being a major publication forum for theoretical and applied research in a variety of topics, tentatively grouped together in research areas, examples of which are indicated in the list below.
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Applied Ontology is affiliated with the International Association for Ontology and its Applications (IAOA).
In recent years, the dramatic growth of information and communication technologies has led to an increasingly interdisciplinary approach to research and development activities in these fields. To exploit the immense opportunities of widespread networks effectively, designers of modern information systems need to combine the precision of formal semantics with the needs of cognitive transparency, as they incorporate increasingly sophisticated and heterogeneous information content. The recent explosion of interest on ontologies is an important component of this trend. Researchers in disciplines such as knowledge engineering, information systems modeling, artificial intelligence, formal and computational linguistics, information retrieval, library science, and knowledge management have come to realize that a solid foundation for their research calls for serious work in ontology, understood as a general theory of the types of entities and relations that make up their respective domains of inquiry. In all these areas, attention has started to focus squarely on the content of information, rather than on just the formats and languages used to represent that content.
Applied Ontology focuses on information content in its broadest sense. As the subtitle makes clear, two broad kinds of content-based research activities are envisioned: ontological analysis and conceptual modeling. The former includes any attempt to investigate the nature and structure of a domain of interest using rigorous philosophical or logical tools; the latter concerns the cognitive and linguistic structures we use to model the world, as well as the various analysis tools and methodologies we adopt for producing useful computational models, such as information systems schemes or knowledge structures. Applied Ontology is the first journal with explicit and exclusive focus on ontological analysis and conceptual modeling under an interdisciplinary view. It aims to establish a unique niche in the realm of scientific journals by carefully avoiding unnecessary duplication with discipline-oriented journals. For this reason, authors will be encouraged to use language that will be intelligible also to those outside their specific sector of expertise, and the review process will be tailored to this end. For example, authors of theoretical contributions will be encouraged to show the relevance of their theory for applications, while authors of more technological papers will be encouraged to show the relevance of a well-founded theoretical perspective. Moreover, the journal will publish papers focusing on representation languages or algorithms only where these address relevant content issues, whether at the level of practical application or of theoretical understanding. Similarly, it will publish descriptions of tools or implemented systems only where a contribution to the practice of ontological analysis and conceptual modeling is clearly established.
Applied Ontology aims at being a major publication forum for theoretical and applied research in a variety of topics, tentatively grouped together in research areas, examples of which are indicated in the list below.
Foundational issues • Philosophical foundations of ontology • Basic ontological categories and relations • Ontology, epistemology, and semiotics
Specialized ontologies • Ontology of time, events and processes • Ontology of space and geography • Ontology of physics and physical objects • Ontology of biomedicine • Ontology of mental entities • Ontology of agents and actions • Ontology of organizations and social reality • Ontology of the information society • Ontology of business and e-commerce • Ontology of law • Ontology of history, culture and evolution
Ontology development and ontology-driven conceptual modeling • Methodologies for ontology development • Impact of ontological analysis on current modeling practices • Best-practice examples and case studies
Ontology management • Tools for ontology development, analysis and comparison • Comparison and evaluation of ontologies • Ontology management, maintenance, versioning • Methodologies for ontology merging, alignment, and integration • Semantic Web
Ontology and language • Ontology and natural-language semantics • Ontology and lexical resources • Ontology and terminology • Ontology learning techniques and their evaluation • Role of ontology in natural-language systems
Ontology, cognition, perception • Conceptual schemas, perceptual invariances and ontological categorization • Psychological experiments evaluating the cognitive adequacy of ontological categories
Ontology and content standards • Library science • Knowledge organization • Museums and cultural repositories • Multimedia content • Product descriptions • Process and service descriptions • Biomedical and other scientific terminologies
Innovative ontology-based applications
| John A. Bateman | University of Bremen, Germany |
| Janna Hastings | University of Zurich, Switzerland |
| Nicola Guarino | National Research Council Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, Italy |
| Mark A. Musen | Stanford University, USA |
| Philipp Cimiano | Bielefeld University, Germany |
| Giancarlo Guizzardi | University of Bolzano, Italy |
| Robert Hoehndorf | King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia |
| Leo Obrst | The Mitre Corporation, USA |
| Barry Smith | Reinvent Technology, USA |
| Michael F. Uschold | Reinvent Technology, Canada |
| Laure Vieu | IRIT-CNRS, France |
| Mara Abel | Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil |
| João Paulo Almeida | Federal University of Espírito Santo, Brazil |
| Mauricio Almeida | Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil |
| Nathalie Aussenac-Gilles | Université Paul Sabatier, France |
| Adrien Barton | IRIT-CNRS, France |
| Brandon Bennett | University of Leeds, UK |
| John Beverley | State University of New York at Buffalo, USA |
| Thomas Bittner | State University of New York at Buffalo, USA |
| Alex Borgida | Rutgers University, USA |
| Stefano Borgo | ISTC-CNR, Italy |
| Mathias Brochhausen | University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, USA |
| Boyan Brodaric | Geological Survey of Canada, Italy |
| Vinay K. Chaudhri | SRI International, USA |
| Christiane Fellbaum | Princeton University, USA |
| Roberta Ferrario | Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, Italy |
| Aldo Gangemi | University of Bologna and ISTC-CNR, Italy |
| Pawel Garbacz | The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland |
| Yolanda Gil | University of Southern California, USA |
| Dagmar Gromann | University of Vienna, Austria |
| Michael Gruninger | University of Toronto, Canada |
| Torsten Hahmann | University of Maine, USA |
| Yongqun (Oliver) He | University of Michigan, USA |
| Maria Hedblom | Jönköping University, Sweden |
| Heinrich Herre | University of Leipzig, Germany |
| Pascal Hitzler | Kansas State University, USA |
| Krzysztof Janowicz | University of California, USA |
| Ludger Jansen | Ruhr University of Bochum, Germany |
| Paul Johannesson | Stockholm University, Sweden |
| Gilles Kassel | Jules Verne University of Picardie, France |
| Megan Katsumi | University of Toronto, Canada |
| Maria Keet | University of Cape Town, South Africa |
| Werner Kuhn | University of California, USA |
| Oliver Kutz | Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy |
| Claudio Masolo | ISTC-CNR, Italy |
| William E. McCarthy | Michigan State University, USA |
| Hande McGinty | Kansas State University, USA |
| Riichiro Mizoguchi | Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Japan |
| Alessandro Mosca | Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy |
| Fabian Neuhaus | University of Magdeburg, Germany |
| Neil Otte | Johns Hopkins University, USA |
| Chris Partridge | BORO Solutions, UK |
| Oscar Pastor Lopez | Valencia University of Technology, Spain |
| Maria Teresa Pazienza | University of Roma Tor Vergata, Italy |
| Daniele Porello | ISTC-CNR, Italy |
| Roberta Porzel | University of Bremen, Germany |
| Daniele Radicioni | University of Torino, Italy |
| Emilio Sanfilippo | ISTC - CNR, Italy |
| Daniele Francesco Santamaria | University of Catania, Italy |
| Marco Schorlemmer | IIIA-CSIC, Italy |
| Selja Seppälä | University College Cork, Ireland |
| Amit P. Sheth | Wright State University, USA |
| Elena Simperl | University of Southampton, UK |
| Veda Storey | Georgia State University, USA |
| Walter Terkaj | L’Istituto di Sistemi e Tecnologie Industriali Intelligenti per il Manifatturiero Avanzato, Italy |
| Nicolas Troquard | Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy |
| Hans Weigand | Tilburg University, The Netherlands |
| Bob Young | Loughborough University, UK |
| Mihai Pomarlan | Bremen University, Germany |