Consensus Building in Collaborative Ontology Engineering Processes

Ontology development is time and money consuming as well as an error-prone process; the need for an embedded mechanism that evaluates quality and acceptance of the resultant collaborative ontology is apparent. Existing tools and methodologies lack consensus building mechanisms that must be employed in order for a team to cooperate and agree on the design and deployment process of a shared one. In this paper we describe a collaborative methodology for ontology development that supports a team to reach consensus through iterative evaluations and improvements. In every cycle of the iterative process, the structure of the collaborative ontology is revised and evolved. Finally, the process terminates when the participants have no more critiques and objections. We illustrate the methodology by creating an ontology for an airline training centre using the PROTÉGÉ software tool.