A Task-Based Ontology Enginnering Approach for Novice Ontology Developers

After classifying the multitude of the ontology development methodologies available in the literature, we propose a new ontology development approach, by combining activities from these methodologies, based on the needs of a novice ontology developer. This approach is adaptive, with respect to contextual factors, which affect the ontology engineering. In order to achieve this, we apply a twofold restriction on the contextual factors considered. One concerns the knowledge level of the ontology developer in a specific domain and the other concerns the strategy to be followed towards ontology creation. We propose four alternative scenarios for the novice ontology developer to choose, in order to build his personal domain ontology. The choice of the appropriate scenario to be followed, depends on his knowledge level of the domain under description and his degree of accessibility to the available resources required by the ontology engineering process.