Collaborative ontology engineering: a survey <s> Collaboration tools <s> Purpose – Aims to present the ontology engineering methodology DILIGENT, a methodology focussing on the evolution of ontologies instead of the initial design, thus recognizing that knowledge is a tangible and moving target. Design/methodology/approach – First describes the methodology as a whole, then detailing one of the five main steps of DILIGENT. The second part describes case studies, either already performed or planned, and what we learned (or expect to learn) from them. Findings – With the case studies it was discovered the strengths and weaknesses of DILIGENT. During the evolution of ontologies, arguments need to be exchanged about the suggested changes. Identifies those kind of arguments which work best for the discussion of ontology changes. Research implications – DILIGENT recognizes ontology engineering methodologies like OnToKnowledge or Methontology as proven useful for the initial design, but expands them with its strong focus on the user-centric further development of the ontology and the provided integration of automatic agents in the process of ontology evolution. Practical implications – With DILIGENT the experience distilled from a number of case studies and this offers the knowledge manager a methodology to work in an ever-changing environment. Originality/value – DILIGENT is the first methodology to put focus not on the initial development of the ontology, but on the user and his usage of the ontology, and on the changes introduced by the user. We take the user’s own view seriously and enable feedback towards the evolution of the ontology, stressing the ontology’s role as a shared conceptualisation. <s> BIB001 </s> Collaborative ontology engineering: a survey <s> Collaboration tools <s> Creating and designing an ontology is a complex task requiring discussions between domain and ontology engineering experts as well as the users of an ontology. We present the Cicero tool, that facilitates efficient discussions and accelerates the convergence to decisions. Furthermore, by integrating it with an ontology editor, it helps to improve the documentation of an ontology. <s> BIB002
Collaborative ontology engineering environments can be characterized by a significant amount of deliberation between contributors regarding both the ontology to be developed and the engineering 9 http://www.neon-project.org process itself. Discussions between participants usually take place via email, instant messaging and discussion forums. While these channels can provide general-purpose communication and archiving support, a direct linking between the threads of discussions and the content of the ontology the discussions refer to is largely missing. As such, gaining an understanding of the status of the discussion, and of the rationale behind a certain decision require extensive effort, especially for any part of the community that is not at the core of the editing team, or that joins the project at a later stage. These limitations have been recently addressed within the Prote´ge´initiative, which released a collaborative version of their popular ontology engineering environment  . Going beyond such links, taking an informed decision on any ontology-related issue, be that the resolution of a conflicting situation, the detection of inconsistencies, or the assessment of the necessity to introduce specific changes in the ontology, requires dedicated tool support. Such support is not offered per default through the channels mentioned above, or even by more specialized tools such as (wiki-based) ontology editors, if these are not customized to the task and the domain at hand. One exception might be the topic of argumentation, which is at the core of several methodologies and collaborative engineering environments BIB001 BIB002 . Furthermore, while face-to-face meetings commonly do occur in the majority of collaborative ontology engineering projects, recording minutes, decisions and actions as structured information linked to the ontology is not fully supported by the technology available. The remaining sections will present and perform a comparative analysis of the most important methodologies and associated software environments created in the context of collaborative ontology engineering over the past decade. Each methodology will be presented in terms of their main activities and tasks, as well as tool support and real-world application. The second part of the survey will concentrate on the most promising tools in this area and on how they support particularly challenging themes such as evolution and collaboration.