This paper presents our practical experience of developing an ontology using the EXPLODE method for Value-Added Publishing. Value-Added Publishing is a relatively new area of electronic information distribution that extends beyond the established simple modes of online publishing. VAP considers the needs of the user as a primary measure of effectiveness of an online document by evaluating various metrics such as author reputation and number of citations. At implementation level the features of VAP can be achieved by customised information extraction agents. The domain of VAP raises many challenges. VAP is being developed by different groups of researchers, the requirements for the ontology come from many different places, not necessarily consistent with each other. Since VAP is still not a strongly established field, its borders and the issues that it addresses often change. EXPLODE is a method which is suitable for a dynamic environment. In this paper we give an overview of EXPLODE and describe the issues that we encountered and the decisions we had to make regarding the ontology design, structure and content. 1.

Abstract. The paper discusses a framework for evaluating and comparing methodologies for ontology development and its application to the evaluation of three existing methodologies. The framework is characterised by a domain-independent step and by an application-driven step. It has been adopted to analyse and compare three methodologies, the “Ontology Development 101 ” methodology, the “Unified Methodology ” and EXPLODE, in respect to the analysis, design, verification and implementation of an ontology for content-based retrieval of XML documents. 1