Towards ontology quality assessment

Abstract

The success of systems making use of ontology schemas de- pend mainly on the quality of their underlying ontologies. This has been acknowledged by researchers who responded by suggesting metrics to measure different aspects of quality. Tools have also been designed, but determining the set of quality metrics to use may not be a straightforward task. Research on ontology quality shows that detection of problems at an early stage of the ontology development cycle is necessary to reduce costs and maintenance at later stages, which is more difficult to achieve and requires more effort. Assessment using the right metrics is therefore crucial to identify key quality problems. This ensures that the data and instances of the ontology schema are sound and fit for purpose. Our contribution is a systematic survey on quality metrics applicable to ontologies in the Semantic Web, and preliminary investigation towards methods to visualise quality problems in ontologies.