Quality ontology engineering based on thesauri

Vocabularies (sometimes called terminologies) and ontologies do not appear to be very different from the perspective of a practitioner and are often used as if they are ontologies. Nevertheless, experts acknowledge that ontologies are different from vocabularies, but find it difficult to pin down the differences. The identification of the differences between ontologies and vocabularies is the main goal of my research. The differences are made explicit through a method that guides the re-engineering of a vocabulary into a qualitatively good ontology. My particular interest is in reengineering a thesaurus as a specific type of vocabulary.