SEAL - a SEmantic portAL with content management functionality

Abstract

“OntoWeb” is an European Union IST-funded thematic network for "Ontology-based information exchange for knowledge management and electronic commerce". The corresponding OntoWeb portal constitutes a Web-based research information system that is driven by some of the technologies which it reports about.

In this paper, we present the core methodology underlying the OntoWeb portal, viz. SEAL (SEmantic portAL). In particular, we describe some of the core challenges that SEAL must meet. Because of the distributed nature of research information, SEAL has been developed as a methodology that integrates heterogeneous information from distributed resources. Because of the complexity of the application domain, SEAL is based on ontologies about research information that greatly contribute to the combined goals of low-effort information integration and user-friendly information presentation. Because of the high quality requirements obliged onto the OntoWeb portal, SEAL has been extended with content management functionality supporting portal editors in their process to rule out undesirable content.