Combining ontologies and peer‐to‐peer technologies for inter‐organizational knowledge management

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to review the characteristics of systems that combine P2P technology with explicit ontologies and assess the benefits of these technologies for inter‐organizational knowledge management. Design/methodology/approach – We characterize existing technologies with respect to a number of aspects that are relevant to knowledge management on a technical level. We further provide an example of an existing system and categorize it according to the aspects. Findings – We conclude that ontology‐based P2P systems are in general beneficial for distributed knowledge management systems and that the design of such systems can be guided using the aspects we distinguish. Originality/value – The paper presents the first attempt to rigorously identify and discuss the design space of ontology‐based P2P systems.