TY - JOUR
T1 - On beyond Gruber
T2 - “Ontologies” in today's biomedical information systems and the limits of OWL
AU - Rector, Alan
AU - Schulz, Stefan
AU - Rodrigues, Jean Marie
AU - Chute, Christopher G.
AU - Solbrig, Harold
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 The Author(s)
PY - 2019/6
Y1 - 2019/6
N2 - The word “ontology” was introduced to information systems when only closed-world reasoning systems were available. It was “borrowed” from philosophy, but literal links to its philosophical meaning were explicitly disavowed. Since then, open-world reasoning systems based on description logics have been developed, OWL has become a standard, and philosophical issues have been raised. The result has too often been confusion. The question “What statements are ontological” receives a variety of answers. A clearer vocabulary that is better suited to today's information systems is needed. The project to base ICD-11 on a “Common Ontology” required addressing this confusion. This paper sets out to systematise the lessons of that experience and subsequent discussions. We explore the semantics of open-world and closed-world systems. For specifying knowledge bases and software, we propose “invariants” or, more fully, “the first order invariant part of the background domain knowledge base” as an alternative to the words “ontology” and “ontological.” We discuss the role and limitations of OWL and description logics and how they are complementary to closed world systems such as frames and to less formal “knowledge organisation systems”. We illustrate why the conventions of classifications such as ICD cannot be formulated directly in OWL, but can be linked to OWL knowledge bases by queries. We contend that while OWL and description logics are major advances for representing invariants and terminologies, they must be combined with other technologies to represent broader background knowledge faithfully. The ICD-11 architecture is one approach. We argue that such hybrid architectures can and should be developed further.
AB - The word “ontology” was introduced to information systems when only closed-world reasoning systems were available. It was “borrowed” from philosophy, but literal links to its philosophical meaning were explicitly disavowed. Since then, open-world reasoning systems based on description logics have been developed, OWL has become a standard, and philosophical issues have been raised. The result has too often been confusion. The question “What statements are ontological” receives a variety of answers. A clearer vocabulary that is better suited to today's information systems is needed. The project to base ICD-11 on a “Common Ontology” required addressing this confusion. This paper sets out to systematise the lessons of that experience and subsequent discussions. We explore the semantics of open-world and closed-world systems. For specifying knowledge bases and software, we propose “invariants” or, more fully, “the first order invariant part of the background domain knowledge base” as an alternative to the words “ontology” and “ontological.” We discuss the role and limitations of OWL and description logics and how they are complementary to closed world systems such as frames and to less formal “knowledge organisation systems”. We illustrate why the conventions of classifications such as ICD cannot be formulated directly in OWL, but can be linked to OWL knowledge bases by queries. We contend that while OWL and description logics are major advances for representing invariants and terminologies, they must be combined with other technologies to represent broader background knowledge faithfully. The ICD-11 architecture is one approach. We argue that such hybrid architectures can and should be developed further.
KW - Description logics
KW - ICD
KW - Knowledge representation
KW - OWL
KW - Ontology
KW - Terminology
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U2 - 10.1016/j.yjbinx.2019.100002
DO - 10.1016/j.yjbinx.2019.100002
M3 - Review article
C2 - 34384571
AN - SCOPUS:85064247530
VL - 2
JO - Journal of Biomedical Informatics: X
JF - Journal of Biomedical Informatics: X
SN - 2590-177X
M1 - 100002
ER -