Lightweight Ontologies in Context - Relationship between Ontology Characteristics and Context Parameters

Ontologies, mainly lightweight ontologies, are ubiquitous throughout the Internet and are succeeding in replacing human expertise. We conducted a study with physicians and nurses performing a search task in the medical domain that demonstrates that lightweight ontologies perform well as a substitute for expertise. The extent of success of the substitution depends upon context of use. Our study investigates lightweight ontologies with respect to the context of use in which they are applied. The better we understand the context of use, the better we can inform ontology design and evaluation. We describe ontologies through characteristics and context through parameters. By varying ontology characteristics and testing the effect on the performance of an ontology-supported task for a context parameter, such as the level of user expertise, we increase our understanding of ontology design and evaluation. Our study shows that changing ontologies by varying some of its characteristics has a direct and significant impact on the performance of the ontology-supported task for different levels of user expertise.