Visual ontology alignment for knowledge sharing and reuse

Purpose – By providing interoperability users can be supported in sharing and reusing vocabularies and knowledge. Ontology alignment plays an important role in the context of semantic interoperability. Usually ontology alignment tools generate results that are difficult to understand or assess. In order to enable users to check and improve alignment results and to understand their consequences information visualization techniques are used. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the relevant quality aspects in ontology alignment as well as current activities and available tools. Design/methodology/approach – Based on a literature study quality measures for ontology alignment identified and requirements for visual ontology alignment are defined. As a proof of concepts a prototype called AlViz was developed. Findings – Information visualization offers appropriate methods for the assessment of ontology alignment results. Different levels of detail and overview help users to navigate and understand the alignments. The assessment of semi‐structured resources by users involves learning activities. The neighborhood of the entity under investigation bears relevant semantic information. Therefore, assessment may include crisscrossing acquisition of knowledge representations and their semantics. Originality/value – Along a comprehensive framework alignment assessment tasks are identified and visualization tool is introduced and applied which aims at making ontology alignment results manageable and comprehensible.