Directly Deriving Binary Relation Types From Concept Types, especially Process or Role Types

This article proposes an ontology design pattern for leading knowledge providers to represent knowledge in more normalized, precise and inter­related ways, hence in ways that help the matching and exploitation of knowledge from different sources. This pattern is a knowledge sharing best practice that is domain and language independent. It can be used as a criteria for measuring the quality of an ontology. This pattern is: "using binary relation types directly derived from concept types, especially role types or types of process". The article explains and illustrates this pattern, and relates it to other patterns and general ontology quality criteria. It also provides an ontology for automatically deriving relation types from concept types (e.g., those from lexical ontologies such as those derived from the WordNet lexical database). This derivation helps normalizing knowledge, reduces having to introduce new relation types and helps keeping all the types organized.