Coupling of WordNet Entries for Ontology Mapping using Virtual Documents

Facilitating information exchange is a crucial service for ontology-based knowledge systems. This can be achieved by the mapping of two heterogenous ontologies. Many mapping frameworks utilize language-based knowledge resources such as WordNet. By coupling all ontology concepts to a corresponding entry in WordNet, one can quantify the lexical relatedness of any two ontology concepts. However, coupling the correct entry is a difficult task due to the ambiguous nature of names. Coupling the wrong entries hence yields similarity values that do not correctly express the relatedness of two given concepts, resulting in a poor performance of the overall mapping framework. This paper proposes an approach for the more accurate coupling of ontology concepts with their corresponding WordNet entries. The basis of the proposed approach is the creation of separate virtual documents representing the different ontology concepts and WordNet entries and coupling these according to their document similarities. The extent of improvements using this approach are evaluated using a data set originating from the Ontology Alignment Evaluation Initiative (OAEI). Furthermore, the performance of a framework using our approach is demonstrated using the results of the OAEI 2011 competition.