A vision for diagrammatic ontology engineering

Ontology engineering is becoming more important, given the rapid rise of data in this information age. To better understand and reason about this data, ontologies provide us with insight into its structure. With this comes the involvement of a wide range of stakeholders, such as information analysts, software engineers, lawyers, and domain experts, alongside specialist ontology engineers. These specialists are likely to be adept at using existing approaches to ontology development, typically description logic or one of its various stylized forms. However, not all stakeholders can readily access such notations, which often have a very mathematical style. Many stakeholders, even including uent ontology engineers, could bene t from visual approaches to ontology engineering, provided those approaches are accessible. This paper presents ongoing research into a diagrammatic approach to ontology engineering, outlining key research advances that are required.