How to Document Ontology Design Patterns

Ontology Design Patterns are reusable building blocks for ontology modelling. As such, Ontology Design Patterns need to be understood by the humans who use them for ontology engineering tasks. In order to make it easier for ontology engineers to understand a previously unknown Ontology Design Pattern, the quality of the documentation of the pattern plays a central role. However, the question how to document Ontology Design Patterns effectively has so far largely been neglected in the research literature. In this paper, we investigate the topic systematically. We discuss the results of three separate surveys to determine the central aspects of good documentation for Ontology Design Patterns. We find that the surveys, which were conducted independently of each other, by two separate groups, essentially agree on the importance of key aspects of documentation.