Specifying a semantic wiki ontology through a collaborative reconceptualisation process

Abstract

This paper describes an action-research approach to the specification of an ontology to be applied in the information organisation of a community of forest planning experts. Like many others, a community of forest planning experts does not see their technical domains in unison, rather it voices several points of view that need to be shared and understood. This research started by addressing the practical problem of achieving an effective information structure and organisation for a semantic wiki platform. This was supported by a method and platform for the collaborative specification of ontologies: conceptME. Simultaneously, an empirical study was carried out aiming at understanding better how a technical community pragmatically develops conceptual representations of a domain. The results of this research show the benefits of collaboration in the development of conceptual models for knowledge organisation and information retrieval. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.