An ontology for the formalization and visualization of scientific knowledge

TL;DR

This paper presents an ontology designed to formalize and visualize scientific knowledge, focusing on core concepts like theorems and laws, to improve understanding and organization across scientific disciplines.

Contribution

It introduces a new ontology centered on scientific knowledge objects, constructed through expert interviews and alignment with existing sources, enhancing visualization and formalization.

Findings

Ontology aligns with multiple sources for consistency

Validated by formalizing physics knowledge

Facilitates understanding of scientific concepts

Abstract

The construction of an ontology of scientific knowledge objects, presented here, is part of the development of an approach oriented towards the visualization of scientific knowledge. It is motivated by the fact that the concepts that are used to organize scientific knowledge (theorem, law, experience, proof, etc.) appear in existing ontologies but that none of these ontologies is centered on this topic and presents them in a simple and easily understandable organization. This ontology has been constructed by 1) selecting concepts that appear in high level ontologies or in ontologies of knowledge objects of specific fields and 2) by interviewing scientists in different fields. We have aligned this ontology with some of the sources used, which has allowed us to verify its consistency with respect to them. The validation of the ontology consists in using it to formalize knowledge from various sources, which we have begun to do in the field of physics.