Network of Ontologies – A Systematic Mapping Study and Challenges Comparison

Abstract

Background: Network of ontologies is the pairwise match of a set of ontologies, which became recently relevant due to its applicability in different domains, such as cultural evolution. However, the challenges faced in this area are not completely known and understood, neither are their relations to ontology matching counterpart problems . Aims: The goal of this paper is to identify challenges and applications of a network of ontologies and compare them to the 8 existing challenges of ontology matching [8]. Research questions are: (i) Which are the challenges for a Network of Ontologies? (ii) What are the applications of a Network of Ontologies? Method: We defined and executed a systematic mapping review protocol. A specialist on systematic mapping review and ontology research evaluated protocol and results. Results: Out of the 67 relevant studies, 10 addressed the research questions. All of them presented challenges, but only four presented applications. Conclusions: We identified four new challenges and related them with the eight challenges presented in [8].