Converting Thesaurus to Ontology (a Systematic Review)

Intruduction: The problems and disadvantages of thesauri and the increasing use of ontology in data retrieval have led to studies over the past two decades to suggest the use of thesauruses in the design and construction of ontologies. So, the aim of this study is to review and present a summary of available information about the converting of the thesaurus to ontology. The study was conducted using a systematic review. Kitchenham`s protocol was used (including Research Questions, Search Process, Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria, Quality Assessment, Data Collection and Data Analysis). Five research questions (including what are similarities between thesaurus and ontology? what are differencies between thesaurus and ontology? what are the methods of converting a thesaurus to ontology? what are the benefits of using the thesaurus to create ontology?  and what are the challenges for converting the thesaurus to ontology?) were answerd based on the analysis. The search strategy was determined and implemented and after the removal of duplicate documents, 71 documents were obtained. Then the documents were matched with the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Finally, 13 documents were analyzed as final documents for answering research questions. The results showed that both thesaurus and ontology were used in organizing and covering a particular subject area terminology and their main difference is in the amount of payments to semantic relations between concepts. The definition of classes based on the concepts contained in the thesaurus, the definition of the relationship between concepts and the use of a formal language were the common in all proposed methods. Taking time and avoiding repeating are the benefits of using the thesaurus and the need for an expert specialist in the process of doing work is one of the challenges of converting thesaurus into ontology.