A Critical Review of the Role of User Participation in IS Success

Despite the widely held view that systems are more likely to be successful if users contribute during systems design and development, the exact nature of the relationship between user participation and system outcomes remains unclear. By conducting a systematic review of the related literature, we synthesized the findings of 46 empirical studies, explained the mixed results, and identified issues for future research

Surreptitious, Evolving and Participative Ontology Development: An End-user Oriented Ontology Development Methodology

Ontology not only is considered to be the backbone of the semantic web but also plays a significant role in distributed and heterogeneous information systems. However, ontology still faces limited application and adoption to date. One of the major problems is that prevailing engineering-oriented methodologies for building ontologies do not actively involve end-users but instead rely on a small group of domain experts, which presents barriers to both knowledge elicitation and knowledge sharing. Based on an extensive and critical review of extant ontology development methodologies, a number of issues are identified that could hinder the involvement of end-users in the ontology development process. To address these issues, a surreptitious ontology development methodology is proposed in the dissertation. Based on the result of a usability study, the methodology is refined and a prototype system is developed to implement the methodology. Moreover, a theoretical model is built to predict the impact of surreptitious ontology development on common intentions and conceptual dynamics of the output ontology and commitment by end-users. To test the research model, a field experiment is conducted over a three-month period. The results of data analyses provide support for the proposed methodology in improving the quality and adoption intention of ontology. This research has multifold theoretical and practical implications

Surreptitious, Evolving and Participative Ontology Development: An End-user Oriented Ontology Development Methodology

Ontology not only is considered to be the backbone of the semantic web but also plays a significant role in distributed and heterogeneous information systems. However, ontology still faces limited application and adoption to date. One of the major problems is that prevailing engineering-oriented methodologies for building ontologies do not actively involve end-users but instead rely on a small group of domain experts, which presents barriers to both knowledge elicitation and knowledge sharing. Based on an extensive and critical review of extant ontology development methodologies, a number of issues are identified that could hinder the involvement of end-users in the ontology development process. To address these issues, a surreptitious ontology development methodology is proposed in the dissertation. Based on the result of a usability study, the methodology is refined and a prototype system is developed to implement the methodology. Moreover, a theoretical model is built to predict the impact of surreptitious ontology development on common intentions and conceptual dynamics of the output ontology and commitment by end-users. To test the research model, a field experiment is conducted over a three-month period. The results of data analyses provide support for the proposed methodology in improving the quality and adoption intention of ontology. This research has multifold theoretical and practical implications

Ontology Editing Tools: State of the Art

Ontologies have become an increasingly important research topic. This is a consequence of their usefulness in a range of application domains and the pivotal role they are set to play in the development of the Semantic Web. Ontologies aim at acquiring domain knowledge in a standardized manner and provide a commonly agreed understanding of a domain, which may be reused and shared across groups and applications. Adopting standards facilitates agents to cooperate with one another more efficiently and ultimately developers can build intelligent systems that can understand each other more thoroughly [1]. Hence, the goal of this paper is to present a comparative view of 11 editing tools based on functionalities that will be discussed at length in subsequent sections. We will describe essential functionalities identified in the literature, present our findings and suggestions for future research endeavors