Ontology Selection for Reuse: Will It Ever Get Easier?

Ontologists and knowledge engineers tend to examine different aspects of ontologies when assessing their suitability for reuse. However, most of the evaluation metrics and frameworks introduced in the literature are based on a limited set of internal characteristics of ontologies and dismiss how the community uses and evaluates them. This paper used a survey questionnaire to explore, clarify and also confirm the importance of the set of quality related metrics previously found in the literature and an interview study. According to the 157 responses collected from ontologists and knowledge engineers, the process of ontology selection for reuse depends on different social and community related metrics and metadata. We believe that the findings of this research can contribute to facilitating the process of selecting an ontology for reuse.