Ontologies Supporting Research-Related Information Foraging Using Knowledge Graphs: Literature Survey and Holistic Model Mapping

Abstract

We carried out a literature survey on ontologies dealing with the scholarly and research domains, with a focus on modeling the knowledge graphs that would support information foraging by researchers within the different roles they fulfill during their career. We identified 43 relevant ontologies, of which 35 were found sufficiently documented to be reusable. At the same time, based on the analysis of extensive CVs and activity logs of two senior researchers, we formulated a structured set of competency questions that could be answered through information foraging on the web, and created a high-level conceptual model indicating the data structures that would provide answers to these questions via a holistic knowledge graph. We then studied the retrieved ontologies and mapped them on the entities and relationships from our conceptual model. We identified many overlaps between the ontologies, as well as a few missing features. Preliminary proposals for dealing with some of the overlaps and gaps were formulated.