Ontology-Based Virtual Communities Model for the Knowledge Management System Environment

Virtual communities are gaining attention in many organizations, particularly in Institutes of Higher Learning (IHL). The research communities in IHL have similar research practices and often form groups to collaborate in research activities. With proper Internet infrastructure, research communities form virtual communities to share knowledge and find the highest number of potential people to collaborate. However, studies to understand these research communities either in research activities or capturing changes in the communities are lacking. The study of virtual communities is crucial to properly manage group knowledge and enable social interaction using a tool to enable socialization. Ontology design of virtual communities can be used as a form to formalize research communities. Based on the Knowledge Management (KM) approach of finding the right knowledge and the right people to work, a model called the OntoVC-KMS is proposed. The main objective of this chapter is to address the following questions: 1) What constitutes virtual communities among research communities in IHL? 2) How can virtual communities be formalized using ontology? and 3) Can a KM system support virtual communities in IHL for research communities and practices? To provide the answers, the authors conduct a literature review and develop an ontology design using the ontology development approach of related research. Finally, this chapter describes an approach that promotes ontology design in an organization that focuses on communities and socialization in an IHL.