Building a Lexico-Semantic Resource Collaboratively

Multilingual lexico-semantic resources are used in different semantic services such as meaning extraction or data integration and linking, which are essential for the development of real-world applications. However their use is hampered by the lack of maintenance and quality control mechanisms over their content. The Universal Knowledge Core (UKC) is a multilingual lexico-semantic resource designed as a multi-layered ontology that has a language-independent semantic layer, the concept core, and a language-specific lexico-semantic layer, the natural language core. In this paper, we focus on expert-based, collaborative workflow for building and maintaining our resource through lexicalisation and evaluation of language elements via a dedicated User Interface (UI). We have run a three-month study to analyse the feasibility of the proposed solution. We interviewed participants to obtain a comprehensive vision with respect to different aspects related to the way they interacted with the UI and how the content presented through it was perceived. We concluded that this collaborative experience fostered not only the implementation of a resource but also an improvement of its functionalities, and, above all, it represented an example of effective knowledge sharing which opened up the way to a network of collaborative intelligence.