An ontology for the formalization and visualization of scientific knowledge
This work addresses the problem of organizing and visualizing scientific knowledge for researchers, but it is incremental as it builds on existing ontologies without introducing a new paradigm.
The authors tackled the lack of a centralized ontology for scientific knowledge concepts like theorems and laws by constructing one through selection from existing sources and interviews with scientists, resulting in an ontology validated through formalization in physics.
The construction of an ontology of scientific knowledge objects, presented here, is part of the development of an approach oriented towards the visualization of scientific knowledge. It is motivated by the fact that the concepts that are used to organize scientific knowledge (theorem, law, experience, proof, etc.) appear in existing ontologies but that none of these ontologies is centered on this topic and presents them in a simple and easily understandable organization. This ontology has been constructed by 1) selecting concepts that appear in high level ontologies or in ontologies of knowledge objects of specific fields and 2) by interviewing scientists in different fields. We have aligned this ontology with some of the sources used, which has allowed us to verify its consistency with respect to them. The validation of the ontology consists in using it to formalize knowledge from various sources, which we have begun to do in the field of physics.