A Method for Collaborative Argumentation in Merging Individual Ontologies

This paper proposes a framework of the negotiation process for solving divergences in the collaborative ontology development. Such framework is obtained through the use of philosophical principles deriving from the theories of essence, identity, unity and dependence (preconized by the OntoClean methodology) as to justify part of the argumentation used in the negotiation process among the participants, besides helping reach a consensus and reduce the conceptual gap among models. The evaluation of the experiments conducted with the use of the proposed method suggests the feasibility and implementability of our approach in practice.