Any occurrence of the ontology lifecycle schema (http://www.loa-cnr.it/ontologies/OD/odProjects.owl#ontology-lifecycle-schema) characterized in this ontology. ontology lifecycle The goal of producing knowledge. Information can be considered knowledge when it is possible to reason on it, e.g. by inferring new information from the existing one. Reasoning can be performed by humans, but some forms of inference can be performed by machines. In this ontology, we abstract from the distinction between human and automatic reasoning, because ontology lifecycle includes both. A knowledge role here is played by information objects when they are managed within an epistemic influence situation. Knowledge roles are distinguished into 'resources', 'working items', and 'products'. Those distinctions follows the input-throughput-output pattern from open systems. An execution of a certain ontology project (schema). Execution can be more or less constrained according to the constraints, preferences, and resources declared in the project (schema). A knowledge role taken by information objects produced through an epistemic workflow. ontology design projects ontology An ontology for ontology design, to be used as a set of social requirements for NeOn methodologies and tools. The key notion is 'ontology project', which is assumed to be made up of knowledge-level ('epistemic') workflows, which on their turn contain 'argumentation structures' and 'design rationales' that motivate 'design choices' taken from a 'choice space' generated by 'design patterns' over 'ontology elements'. Appropriate roles (e.g. 'knowledge product', 'knowledge creator') and tasks (e.g. functionalities like 'selection', 'importing', etc.) are used by project, workflow, and rationale schemas. Situation classes ('ontology project execution', 'epistemic workflow enactment', 'argumentation situation', 'design making', 'design choice') are introduced in order to reason on the actual occurrences of those schemas. Moreover, ontology objects and other information objects used during the ontology lifecycle, together with the design operations and the designer agents, are framed by those situations if they comply to the roles and tasks used by the schemas. Types of projects, workflows, argumentation, rationales, patterns, etc. are also introduced. The ontology design ontology uses the following patterns: - the DnS content pattern (http://www.loa-cnr.it/ontologies/ExtendedDnS.owl) has been used throughout, and the following sub-patterns have been used: a) descriptions and concepts depend on existential axioms only when they involve 'descriptive' entities b) descriptions are constrained wrt a given situation class SC c) concepts are constrained wrt a given entity class EC d) SC are defined by requiring that some entity from EC is in their setting. - the collections pattern (http://www.loa-cnr.it/ontologies/ExtendedDnS.owl), and the following sub-patterns have been used: a) collections have any entities as members b) collections are covered or characterized by concepts c) collections are unified by descriptions that use or define those concepts. -the plans pattern (http://www.loa-cnr.it/ontologies/Plans.owl): a) plans use tasks, roles, and parameters b) plans have a main goal as a proper part c) plans are 'executed' within plan executions by agents playing roles in order to perform the tasks used by the plan d) plan executions start from certain situations ('preconditions') and result in certain situations ('postconditions'). Postconditions can be compliant or not to the expected goal. 41 A resource role played only by information objects. A knowledge role taken by information objects used as resources through an epistemic workflow. A performerRole that is superordinated to knowledge roles, e.g. a knowledge product role depends on the knowledge creator role. Any project aiming at entering the lifecycle of an ontology. As all projects, ontology projects inherit the characteristics and constraints typical of projects: teams, persons, schedules, time, funding, strategical considerations, etc. An individual ontology choice, e.g. adding a class, is not a project per se, although it can be viewed from that perspective, if the only objective of a project is to produce that change into the ontology. ontology project