An Ontology to Model Collaborative Organizational Structures in CSCW Systems

This paper presents a conceptual model to represent the organizational structure of the users in a CSCW system and their cooperative interactions, that is, interactions between them through the system. We define this conceptual model and its associated ontology with the aim of defining in a precise way the main concepts and their relationships used in the development of CSCW systems, This vocabulary description eases the representation, specification, analysis, and design of this kind of environments. Such common concepts are absolutely necessary because all the artefacts needed to model a collaborative system will be built starting from them, Therefore they should be used in a coherent and non-ambiguous way. This ontology will be the base for the further definition of the models involved in the development of collaborative systems.