Semantic interoperability of e-services in collaborative networked organizations

Semantic interoperability is a crucial issue in enterprises when they participate in Virtual Organizations (VOs). Addressing semantic heterogeneities, detected in VOs, aims to ensure that the meaning of information exchanged is interpreted in the same way by all communicating parties and their systems. In this paper we examine how ontologies can be employed by a system of e-services for delivering interoperability to enterprises, independent of particular IT deployments. In order to support interoperability service utilities in VOs, this paper presents a top-level ontology for collaborative networked organizations (code named OCEAN). The OCEAN ontology is designed as a lightweight top-level ontology that provides a common terminological reference for e-services supporting VO collaborations. We demonstrate how the usage of OCEAN enables e-service interoperability in knowledge-intensive collaborations presenting concrete examples from the pharmaceutical industry.

[1]  Danah Boyd,et al.  Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship , 2007, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[2]  Christiane Fellbaum,et al.  Book Reviews: WordNet: An Electronic Lexical Database , 1999, CL.

[3]  R. Clay Sprowls.  The virtual corporation: William H. Davidow and Michael S. Malone Harper Collins, New York, 1993 294 pp, $23.00 ISBN 0-88730-593-8 , 1993, J. Strateg. Inf. Syst..

[4]  Jenny A. Harding,et al.  A manufacturing system engineering ontology model on the semantic web for inter-enterprise collaboration , 2007, Comput. Ind..

[5]  Yarden Katz,et al.  Pellet: A practical OWL-DL reasoner , 2007, J. Web Semant..

[6]  B. Burnand,et al.  The RAND/UCLA Appropriateness Method User's Manual , 2001 .

[7]  Gregoris Mentzas,et al.  An Architecture for Collaboration Patterns in Agile Event-Driven Environments , 2009, 2009 18th IEEE International Workshops on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructures for Collaborative Enterprises.

[8]  Abbe Mowshowitz,et al.  Virtual Organization - Introduction to the Special Section. , 1997 .

[9]  Enrico Motta,et al.  A generic library of problem solving methods for scheduling applications , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering.

[10]  Nada Lavrac,et al.  An Ontology for Virtual Organization Breeding Environments , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C (Applications and Reviews).

[11]  Américo Lopes Azevedo,et al.  Interoperability in Collaborative Networks: Independent and industry-specific initiatives - The case of the footwear industry , 2008, Comput. Ind..

[12]  Abbe Mowshowitz,et al.  Virtual organization , 1997, CACM.

[13]  Jaap Gordijn,et al.  Towards a Reference Ontology for Business Models , 2006, ER.

[14]  Matteo Cristani,et al.  A Survey on Ontology Creation Methodologies , 2005, Int. J. Semantic Web Inf. Syst..

[15]  Anne P. Massey,et al.  From the user interface to the consumer interface: results from a global experiment , 2000, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[16]  Atanas Kiryakov.  Ontologies for Knowledge Management , 2006 .

[17]  L LohseGerald,et al.  Predictors of online buying behavior , 1999 .

[18]  Constance Elise Porter,et al.  A Typology of Virtual Communities: A Multi-Disciplinary Foundation for Future Research , 2006, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[19]  C. Fellbaum.  An Electronic Lexical Database , 1998 .

[20]  Silvana Castano,et al.  Ontology-based Interoperability Services for Semantic Collaboration in Open Networked Systems , 2006 .

[21]  Nicola Guarino,et al.  Sweetening Ontologies with DOLCE , 2002, EKAW.

[22]  Hamideh Afsarmanesh,et al.  Collaborative networks: a new scientific discipline , 2005, J. Intell. Manuf..

[23]  Ning Huang,et al.  Ontology-based enterprise knowledge integration , 2008 .

[24]  Michael Uschold,et al.  The Enterprise Ontology , 1998, The Knowledge Engineering Review.

[25]  Luca Chittaro,et al.  New directions for the design of virtual reality interfaces to e-commerce sites , 2002, AVI '02.

[26]  M. Malone.  The Virtual Corporation , 1993 .

[27]  J. Abraham.  The international conference on harmonisation of technical requirements for registration of pharmaceuticals for human use , 2009 .

[28]  Joost Breuker,et al.  Towards principled core ontologies , 1996 .

[29]  K. D. Joshi,et al.  A collaborative approach to ontology design , 2002, CACM.

[30]  Eleni Stroulia,et al.  Virtual worlds - past, present, and future: New directions in social computing , 2009, Decis. Support Syst..

[31]  Clay Sprawls,et al.  The virtual corporation , 1993 .

[32]  Yannick Naudet,et al.  An Ontology of Interoperability in Inter-Enterprise Communities , 2007, IESA.

[33]  R. Studer,et al.  Semantic Web Technologies: Trends and Research in Ontology-based Systems , 2006 .

[34]  Johanna Völker,et al.  A Framework for Ontology Learning and Data-driven Change Discovery , 2005 .

[35]  Adam Pease,et al.  Towards a standard upper ontology , 2001, FOIS.