Problem solving methods (PSMs) are domain-independent reasoning components, which specify patterns of behavior which can be reused across applications. While the availability of extensive PSM libraries and the emerging consensus on PSM specification languages indicate the maturity of the field, a number of important research issues are still open. In particular, very little progress has been achieved on foundational and methodological issues. Existing libraries of PSMs lack a clear theoretical basis and only provide weak support for the method development process, usually in the form of informal guidelines. In this paper we will address these issues by illustrating a framework which characterizes PSMs in terms of problem commitments, problem-solving paradigms and domain assumptions. This framework provides i) a theoretical foundation for situating PSM research and individual PSMs, as well as ii) an organization which allows us to characterize method development and selection as a process of navigating through a three-dimensional space (defined by the three components of our framework). Individual moves through this space are specified by means of adapters. In the paper we will illustrate these ideas in detail, with examples taken from parametric design problem solving. 1.

. The internet is rapidly becoming the first place for researchers to publish documents, but at present they receive little support in searching, tracking, analyzing or debating concepts in a literature from scholarly perspectives. This paper describes the design rationale and implementation of ScholOnto, an ontology-based digital library server to support scholarly interpretation and discourse. It enables researchers to describe and debate via a semantic network the contributions a document makes, and its relationship to the literature. The paper discusses the computational services that an ontology-based server supports, alternative user interfaces to support interaction with a large semantic network, usability issues associated with knowledge formalization, new work practices that could emerge, and related work. 2 1 Introduction It is becoming standard practice for researchers to publish their documents on the internet (or intranets), via personal, institutional and discipline-spe...

The diversity and distributed nature of the resources available in the semantic web poses significant challenges when these are used to help automatically build an ontology. One persistent and pervasive problem is that of the resolution or elimination of coreference that arises when more than one identifier is used to refer to the same resource. Tackling this problem is crucial...

. In this document we present a library of generic, reusable components whose purpose is to support the specification and operationalization of classification problem solvers. In addition, it is envisaged that this library will provide a test case for future version of the IBROW component brokering and configuration system. The library has been specified in the OCML modelling language, according to the IBROW framework for reuse. It comprises ontologies, task specifications and problem solving methods. In the document we discuss our approach to modelling classification problem solving, we describe the various parts of the library, we illustrate its application to a pre-existing domain model and we discuss related work and open issues. Contact Information Email: {e.motta, w.lu}@open.ac.uk 1. INTRODUCTION Research on problem solving methods (Benjamins and Fensel, 1998) and ontologies (Gruber, 1995) aims (among other things) to identify and formalise classes of generic compone...

The usability of research papers on the Web would be enhanced by a system that explicitly modelled the rhetorical relations between claims in related papers. We describe ClaiMaker, a system for modelling readers ' interpretations of the core content of papers. ClaiMaker provides tools to build a Semantic Web representation of the claims in research papers using an ontology of relations. We demonstrate how the system can be used to make inter-document queries.

In this paper, we describe the Compendium methodology and suite of tools. Compendium is the result of over a decade’s research and development at the intersection of collaborative modeling, organizational memory, computer-supported argumentation and meeting facilitation. We claim that Compendium offers innovative strategies for tackling several of the key challenges in managing knowledge: • improving communication between disparate communities tackling ill-structured problems • real time capture and integration of hybrid material (both predictable/formal, and unexpected/informal) into a reusable group memory • transforming the resulting resource into the right representational formats for different stakeholders. Our starting point is the face-to-face meeting, potentially the most pervasive knowledgebased activity in working life, but also one of the hardest to do well. Meetings in Compendium’s perspective:

Concept models, or ‘ontologies’ represented in description logics are becoming central to many efforts in re-usable medical terminologies. Developers of any ontology must make a series of choices concerning how concepts are represented. These choices are made more difficult by the limitations of the logical formalisms in which ontologies are represented and the complexity of the pragmatics of medical usage, as well as by the sheer size and scope of medicine. Principles for ontology structure to guide developers are still poorly. This paper articulates the principles arrived at from the experience of the GALEN programme and illustrates them with an overview of the its ontology, the GALEN Common Reference Model. The complete Common Reference Model and associated material is available from the OpenGALEN foundation at www.OpenGALEN.org

Building and maintaining a data-intensive web site is costly and time-consuming and a number of approaches have addressed this problem using a model-based methodology. This paper presents IIPS (Intelligent Information Presentation System), a system that uses an ontology-driven approach to site generation and management. IIPS provides a suite of visual tools, which make it possible to model a data-intensive web site at a conceptual level, using site, interface and domain ontologies. As a result, the site designer can focus on the conceptual structure of the target web site and associated resources, independently of its realization. IIPS also provides explicit mapping mechanisms, which make it possible to generate quickly site implementations from the conceptual model. IIPS improves over existing model-based approaches to web design, by providing knowledge-level support for all aspects of web design, including site and resource specification, presentation and domain data.

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Formative work by Lave and Wenger has articulated how practices emerge through the interplay of informal processes with symbolic codifications and artifacts. In this paper, we describe how ontologies can serve as symbolic tools within a community of practice supporting communication and knowledge sharing. We show that when a community’s perspective on an issue is stable, it opens the possibility for introducing knowledge services, based on an ontology co-constructed by knowledge engineers with stakeholders. Using a case study we describe our approach, ontology driven document enrichment, looking at how ontology construction and population can be supported by web based technologies.