Description

In computer science and information science, ontology formally represents knowledge as a set of concepts within a domain, and the relationships between pairs of concepts. It can be used to model a domain and support reasoning about entities. In theory, ontology is a “formal, explicit specification of a shared conceptualisation”.[1] An ontology renders shared vocabulary and taxonomy which models a domain with the definition of objects and/or concepts and their properties and relations. Ontology’s are the structural frameworks for organizing information and are used in artificial intelligence, the Semantic Web, engineering, software, biomedical informatics, library science, enterprise bookmarking, and information architecture as a form of knowledge representation about the world or some part of it. The creation of domain ontology is also fundamental to the definition and use of an enterprise architecture framework. The term ontology has its origin in philosophy and has been applied in many different ways. The word element onto- comes from the being; The core meaning within computer science is a model for describing the world that consists of a set of types, properties, and relationship types. Exactly what is provided around these varies, but they are the essentials of ontology. There is also generally an expectation that there be a close resemblance between the real world and the features of the model in ontology. What many ontology’s having in common in both computer science and in philosophy is the representation of entities, ideas, and events, along with their properties and relations, according to a system of categories. In both fields, one finds considerable work on problems of ontological relativity (e.g., Quine and Kripke in philosophy, Sowa and Guarino in computer science),[4] and debates concerning whether a normative ontology is viable (e.g., debates over foundationalism in philosophy, debates over the Cyc project in AI). Differences between the two are largely matters of focus. Philosophers are less concerned with establishing fixed, controlled vocabularies than are researchers in computer science, while computer scientists are less involved in discussions of first principles, such as debating whether there are such things as fixed essences or whether entities must be ontologically more primary than processes. Other fields make ontological assumptions that are sometimes explicitly elaborated and explored. For instance, the definition and ontology of economics (also sometimes called the political economy) is hotly debated especially in Marxist economics where it is a primary concern, but also in other subfields . Such concerns intersect with those of information science when the intent of a simulation or model is to enable decisions in the economic realm, for instance, to determine what capital assets are at risk or how much (see risk management). All social sciences have explicit ontology issues because they do not have hard falsification[disambiguation needed] criteria like most models in physical sciences – indeed the lack of such widely accepted hard falsification criteria is what defines a social or soft science Selection of research projects is an important and recurring activity in many organizations such as government research funding agencies. It is a challenging multiprocessors task that begins with a call for proposals (CFP) by a funding agency. The CFP is distributed to relevant communities such as universities or research institutions. The research proposals are submitted to the funding agency and then are assigned to experts for peer review. The review results are collected, and the proposals are then ranked based on the aggregation of the experts’ review results. In the NSFC, the number of research proposals received has more than doubled in the past four years, with over 110 000 proposals submitted in one deadline in March 2010. Four to five reviewers are assigned to review each proposal so as to assure accurate and reliable opinions on proposals. To deal with the large volume, it is necessary to group proposals according to their