# Discerning and Characterising Types of Competency Questions for Ontologies

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.13688 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.13688/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 3 of its 28 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Dec 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [An Experiment in Retrofitting Competency Questions for Existing Ontologies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.05662/) (2023)
- [The African Wildlife Ontology tutorial ontologies: requirements, design, and content](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.09519/) (2019)
- [Semantics, Ontology and Explanation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.11124/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [A Comparative Study of Competency Question Elicitation Methods from Ontology Requirements](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.02989/) (2025)
- [OntoPret: An Ontology for the Interpretation of Human Behavior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.23553/) (2025)
- [Competency Questions as Executable Plans: a Controlled RAG Architecture for Cultural Heritage Storytelling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.02545/) (2026)
- [When CQs Go Wrong: Challenges in CQ Verification with OE-Assist](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.24619/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Competency Questions (CQs) are widely used in ontology development by guiding, among others, the scoping and validation stages. However, very limited guidance exists for formulating CQs and assessing whether they are good CQs, leading to issues such as ambiguity and unusable formulations. To solve this, one requires insight into the nature of CQs for ontologies and their constituent parts, as well as which ones are not. We aim to contribute to such theoretical foundations in this paper, which is informed by analysing questions, their uses, and the myriad of ontology development tasks. This resulted in a first Model for Competency Questions, which comprises five main types of CQs, each with a different purpose: Scoping (SCQ), Validating (VCQ), Foundational (FCQ), Relationship (RCQ), and Metaproperty (MpCQ) questions. This model enhances the clarity of CQs and therewith aims to improve on the effectiveness of CQs in ontology development, thanks to their respective identifiable distinct constituent elements. We illustrate and evaluate them with a user story and demonstrate where which type can be used in ontology development tasks. To foster use and research, we created an annotated repository of 438 CQs, the Repository of Ontology Competency QuestionS (ROCQS), incorporating an existing CQ dataset and new CQs and CQ templates, which further demonstrate distinctions among types of CQs.