Thesaurus and ontology structure: Formal and pragmatic differences and similarities

Abstract

Thesauri and other types of controlled vocabularies are increasingly re-engineered into ontologies described using the Web Ontology Language (OWL), particularly in the life sciences. This has led to the perception by some that thesauri are ontologies once they are described by using the syntax of OWL while others have emphasized the need to re-engineer a vocabulary to use it as ontology. This confusion is rooted in different perceptions of what ontologies are and how they differ from other types of vocabularies. In this article, we rigorously examine the structural differences and similarities between thesauri and meaning-defining ontologies described in OWL. Specifically, we conduct (a) a c..