Short term: a slight adaptation and an update (-> 6 more pages) of
my thesis for an Habilitation to Direct Research (HDR; accreditation to
supervise research projects; a research synthesis and exploration after
several post-PhD years).
Current title for this book:
Towards a collaboratively-built knowledge base of&for
scalable knowledge sharing and retrieval
Current PDF version (246 pages).
Current HTML version.
Medium term:
an "onto-book" for the research domain of the above book.
Below is a description of what I mean by "onto-book" (ontology
and book).
Current tentative title:
Towards Genuine Knowledge Sharing, Retrieval and Comparison:
THE FIRST GENUINELY STRUCTURED BOOK
and Associated Collaboratively-built Knowledge Repository
The first above referred book contains a lot of formal descriptions
in the
FL and
Formalized-English (FE) knowledge representation notations
(e.g., see Chapter 3 and,
for an example of structured discussion in FL+FE,
see Section 4.1).
However, it also contains a lot of fully informal descriptions.
Hence, it cannot grows in a scalable way without being rewritten.
An onto-book can accommodate many additions without its structure
having to be
changed and,
at least theoretically, it can be regenerated from a large ontology
or, more generally, a knowledge base (KB). An onto-book can be seen as a view
on this KB and as an input file (and hence also a backup file) for this KB.
The above planned onto-book will be usable as an
"input files" of the M.S.O.
(the default KB of WebKB-2) and will exploit the
cooperation-supporting features
of the data model of WebKB-2.
I call onto-book a "relatively" intuitive linearization of a large ontology (set of concepts and their relationships) into a book. (Thus, "onto-book" does not refer to an "OntoBook of Ontology4" nor to the "Ontobook system for semantic based personal computer resource management"). As it is much more explicitly and semantically organized than a traditional book, an onto-book is meant to ease the retrieval, understanding, comparison, edition and sharing of information, and reduce redundancies as well as inconsistencies. If it is a dynamic view on a publically-accessible shared KB with KB editing protocols such as those of WebKB-2 (see section 2.2.5 of the first above referred book), readers can contribute to it without altering its properties. The above cited linearization is a list of chapters and sections, with one indented list of statements in each section. Each statement is about one "object", which is either a concept or a belief (every "undecomposable statement" being itself either a definition or a belief). In the first case, the statement gathers partial/total definitions or usages for the concept, and hence relates this concept to other concepts or to beliefs using it. In the second case, the statement gathers relations from the belief to other beliefs, e.g., argumentation relations. The statements are expressed in the FL and Formalized-English notations, or any other notation(s) enabling the representation of many relations (from one or many different authors) from/to an object in a unique statement that is formal but that can include some informal parts within strings and that whose reading is - or quickly becomes - easy for a knowledge engineer, a computer scientist and, with more training, any researcher or university student. The indented list in a section follows specialization and/or subpart relations between the objects (hence, it display the specialization and/or subpart hierarchy between these objects). The title of a section or chapter displays the name of one object. If the section has an indented list, this object is the top-level object in the indented list. The hierarchy of chapters and sections follows the specialization hierarchy existing between the objects displayed in the titles. At least theoretically, it should be possible to generate an onto-book from a KB: it should be possible to specify the content of this onto-book as a series of queries on a KB (hence, it is a "virtual document"). The onto-book may contain some informal parts outside (semi-)formal statement, in which case these parts have to be included in its specification in order to re-generate it. An onto-book should be usable as an input file for a KB. The "input files" of the M.S.O. (the default KB of WebKB-2) give various examples of display and organization for parts of an onto-book (e.g., see the input files related to Information Technology). However, these input files are not meant to be included into an onto-book: they are not organized to follow a thematic decomposition, the organization of their section follows the specialization hierarchy of the MSO (this normalization is detailed in Section in 2.3.4. of the first planned book).