On Conceptualization Mismatches Between Ontologies

Ontology, as the means for conceptualizing and structuring domain knowledge, has become the backbone to enable the fulfillment of the semantic Web vision. But as the number of different online ontologies is growing significantly, the problem of managing semantic heterogeneity is increasingly seen. This semantic heterogeneity originates as a mismatch in the way the domain is interpreted and modeled. Many researches identified the reasons of semantic mismatches and categorized them into three main classes´ i.e. linguistic mismatch, conceptualization mismatch and explication mismatch. In this paper, we have identified three more types of conceptualization mismatches. We have demonstrated the importance of such mismatches by giving different scenarios where appropriate. These mismatches should be paid more attention during ontology integration for sound semantic Web environment, because if ignored then we cannot take combined use of independently developed ontologies effectively.