Ontology development in collaborative networks as a process of social construction of meaning

Abstract

This paper proposes a new method to support the collaborative construction of semantic artifacts in an inter-organizational context. It aims at being applied, in particular, in the early phases of ontology development. We share the view that that the development of semantic artifacts in collaborative networks of organizations should be based on a continuous construction of meaning, rather than pursuing the delivery of highly formalized accounts of domains. For that, our research is directed to the application of cognitive semantics results, specifically by developing and extending the Conceptual Blending Theory to cope with the socio-cognitive aspects of inter-organizational ontology development. Besides the outline of the method, we analyze the main problems and gaps in current ontology development methods regarding collaboration and negotiation in early development phases.