Surreptitious, evolving and participative ontology development: An end-user oriented ontology development methodology

Ontology not only is considered to be the backbone of the semantic web but also plays a significant role in distributed and heterogeneous information systems. However, ontology still faces limited application and adoption to date. One of the major problems is that prevailing engineering-oriented methodologies for building ontologies do not actively involve end-users but instead rely on a small group of domain experts, which presents barriers to both knowledge elicitation and knowledge sharing. Based on an extensive and critical review of extant ontology development methodologies, a number of issues are identified that could hinder the involvement of end-users in the ontology development process. To address these issues, a surreptitious ontology development methodology is proposed in the dissertation. Based on the result of a usability study, the methodology is refined and a prototype system is developed to implement the methodology. Moreover, a theoretical model is built to predict the impact of surreptitious ontology development on common intentions and conceptual dynamics of the output ontology and commitment by end-users. To test the research model, a field experiment is conducted over a three-month period. The results of data analyses provide support for the proposed methodology in improving the quality and adoption intention of ontology. This research has multifold theoretical and practical implications.