IOS Press announces the publication of Ontology Makes Sense, a book in honor of Nicola Guarino.
The book is a tribute to his many scientific contributions to the discipline of applied ontology, which he established. The book was presented to him as a surprise in Trento, Italy on April 5th, 2019.
Nicola Guarino is widely recognized as one of the pioneers in formal and applied ontology. Renowned – and sometimes even criticized – for his deep interest in the subtlest details of theoretical analysis, throughout his career he has held the conviction that all science has to be for the benefit of society at large.
The book, edited by Stefano Borgo, Roberta Ferrario, Claudio Masolo and Laure Vieu, is also a testament to Guarino’s continuous efforts to build a community around the discipline. Thanks to these efforts, we now have an international association (International Association for Ontology and its Applications), a dedicated journal (Applied Ontology, co-founded with Mark Musen) and a flagship conference (Formal Ontology in Information Systems), which together form the core of the community’s activities. Guarino also founded the Laboratory for Applied Ontology with two sites in Italy.
Contributed papers reflect the wide variety of research topics that marked Guarino’s impact on the applied ontology community. The book is clustered in five general areas: 1) What is an ontology?; 2) Knowledge engineering; 3) Ontologies and language; 4) Ontological categories and relationships; and 5) Ontologies and applications.