Ontology Development Methodology: A Systematic Review and Case Study

Ontology development methodologies are widely used to guide the process of constructing, deploying and maintaining ontologies. Several methodologies exist for this purpose, meaning the ontology developer must choose a suitable methodology. The process of choosing the best or most suitable methodology can itself be confusing and daunting to ontology developers. This paper aims to present and compare the five most representative existing methodologies of ontology development and provide an assessment that can be referenced by developers and researchers. Furthermore, this paper includes a case study in which an ontology is developed for the Department of Information Technology at the University of Tabuk using the Simple Knowledge-Engineering Methodology; this ontology is known as TITO. We propose future work that includes evaluating TITO using state of the art techniques such as competency questions and domain experts, and extending TITO to include the other departments.