RDF-based peer-to-peer based ontology editing

The evolution of the Semantic Web has accelerated the need for ontologies. There is a need to build new ontologies and to extend and merge existing ontologies. To achieve this we need software tools to edit and build ontologies. Our paper describes software to develop a protocol for collaborative ontology editing based on RDF and using a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networking architecture. The protocol allows for the implementation a voting mechanism embedded into the RDF data itself, using a mixed initiative design for notification. This is implemented as extensions to an ontology browser called OntoRama. The P2P approach is compared to the classic ontology editing approaches and the special requirements of the ontology editing environment are discussed. The protocol, design, implementation and architecture for ontology update are also elaborated.