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Background
Ontology is both
a branch of philosophy and a fast-growing component of
computer science concerned with the development of formal
representations of the entities and relations existing in a
variety of application domains. Ontology has been shown to
have considerable potential on the level of both pure research
and applications. It provides foundations for diverse
technologies in areas such as information integration, natural
language processing, data annotation, and the construction of
intelligent computer systems.
The
University at Buffalo and
Stanford
University have
established the National
Center for Ontological
Research (NCOR), with Buffalo and Stanford as
the two principal sites, together with a number of partner
institutions drawn from academia, government, and
industry.
Goal
NCOR
has the goal of advancing ontological investigation within the
United
States. It will serve
as a vehicle to coordinate, to enhance, to publicize, and to
seek funding for ontological research activities in its two
principal sites and in its partner institutions. A special
focus will be on the establishment of tools and measures for
quality assurance of ontologies.
NCOR
will provide coordination, infrastructure, and other forms of
support for investigators working in the
United
States on theoretical
ontology and on applications in fields such as ontology of the
sciences, spatial and cognitive ontology, terminological
systems, enterprise ontology and in a
variety of defense- and homeland security-related
projects.
It will
also provide US researchers
working in ontology-related areas with specialized support in
seeking external funding and in assembling collaborative,
interdisciplinary teams both nationally and internationally.
It will aid the coordination of ontological projects being
pursued by its partner institutions and also develop resources
for the implementation and evaluation of ontologies. The
Center will also engage in outreach endeavors that are
designed to broaden the range of institutions and individuals
accepting the goals of high quality ontology in both theory
and practice.
Partner
Institutions
Each of NCOR’s
two principal sites in Buffalo and
Stanford
has a substantial track record of nationally and
internationally funded research in ontology. Both are
committed to the central importance of principles-based
ontology as a tool for the integration of data and information
in scientific research and commercial applications.
NCOR’s
partners,
who will be recruited from academia, industry and government,
should have a proven track record of excellence in ontological
research and in the application of ontology to solve concrete
problems.
With
its partners inside and outside
Buffalo and Stanford,
NCOR will undertake co-operative research in several broad
areas of ontological theory, ontology design, implementation,
and application. It will develop schemes to facilitate the
exchange of research personnel for short- and long-term visits
and participation in joint projects, joint supervision of
doctoral students, joint development of research papers in the
area of ontology, and collaborative participation in
nationally and internationally funded research networks. The
Center will also develop an internship scheme designed to
bring about a cross-fertilization
between the academic and industrial aspects of ontological
research.
Founding
Partners
Apelon, Inc.
Ridgefield, CT
Gene
Ontology Consortium
Lawrence Berkeley
Laboratories
Medical Ontology Research National Library of Medicine
The Mitre
Corporation
McLean,
VI
Mouse
Genome Informatics
The
Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, Maine
The National Center for Biomedical
Ontology
National Institute of
Standards and Technology
Ontology
Works
Baltimore,
MD
Open Biomedical
Ontologies Consortium
Sierra Nevada Corporation
San Antonia, Texas
Structural Informatics
Group
University of Washington,
Seattle
Topquadrant
Beaver Falls,
PA
MUSC Biomedical Ontology Research Group
International
Partners
The
European Centre for Ontological Research
The
Japanese Ontology Forum
Methodology
Previous efforts
at ontology building have been conceived primarily in
pragmatic terms, as outgrowths of knowledge engineering or
artificial intelligence research, or more generally as
projects motivated by the need to solve problems internal to
the development of computer systems. NCOR, in contrast, looks
beyond the realm of software artifacts, starting out from the
idea that the development of ontologies can profit from the
application of theoretical rigor based in logic and
philosophical ontology.
Too
many ontologies used in information systems have been
constructed largely by taking as their starting point existing
database systems or the conceptualizations used by the
practitioners within given domains, without sufficiently
checking whether these conceptualizations correspond with
identifiable entities and relationships in the world beyond.
NCOR advocates a view according to which, in advance of
implementation, careful attention should be paid to what the
world is like. Our approach does not dictate any particular
philosophical or metaphysical stance with respect to the world
being modeled. Indeed, we recognize that the same reality may
be sliced in different ways when addressed from different
perspectives. Our approach requires, however, that, whatever
philosophical stance is taken, it is used consistently and
rigorously and on the basis of clearly stated principles. At
the same time we are devoting our energies to the development
of tools designed to help in the selection between ontological
frameworks on the basis of criteria such as usability,
usefulness and accuracy of reasoning support. | 
