Phrase2Onto: A Tool to Support Ontology Extension

Due to importance of data FAIRness (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable), ontologies as a means to make data FAIR have attracted more and more attention in different communities and are being used in semantically-enabled applications. However, to obtain good results while using ontologies in these applications, high quality ontologies are needed of which completeness is one of the important aspects. An ontology lacking information can lead to missing results. In this paper we present a tool, Phrase2Onto, that supports users in extending ontologies to make the ontologies more complete. It is particularly suited for ontology extension using a phrase-based topic model approach, but the tool can support any extension approach where a user needs to make decisions regarding the appropriateness of using phrases to define new concepts. We describe the functionality of the tool and a user study using Pizza Ontology. The user study showed a good usability of the system and high task completion. Further, we report on a real application where we extend the Materials Design Ontology.