Semantic interoperability of e-services in collaborative networked organizations

Semantic interoperability is a crucial issue in enterprises when they participate in Virtual Organizations (VOs). Addressing semantic heterogeneities, detected in VOs, aims to ensure that the meaning of information exchanged is interpreted in the same way by all communicating parties and their systems. In this paper we examine how ontologies can be employed by a system of e-services for delivering interoperability to enterprises, independent of particular IT deployments. In order to support interoperability service utilities in VOs, this paper presents a top-level ontology for collaborative networked organizations (code named OCEAN). The OCEAN ontology is designed as a lightweight top-level ontology that provides a common terminological reference for e-services supporting VO collaborations. We demonstrate how the usage of OCEAN enables e-service interoperability in knowledge-intensive collaborations presenting concrete examples from the pharmaceutical industry.