OTTR is a language for representing ontology modeling patterns, which enables to build ontologies or knowledge bases by instantiating templates. Thereby, particularities of the ontological representation language are hidden from the domain experts, and it enables ontology engineers to, to some extent, separate the processes of deciding about what information to model from deciding about how to model the information, e.g., which design patterns to use. Certain decisions can thus be postponed for the benefit of focusing on one of these processes. To date, only few works on ontology engineering where ontology templates are applied are described in the literature. In this paper, we outline our methodology and report findings from our ontology engineering activities in the domain of Material Science. In these activities, OTTR templates play a key role. Our ontology engineering process is bottom-up, as we begin modeling activities from existing data that is then, via templates, fed into a knowledge graph, and it is top-down, as we first focus on which data to model and postpone the decision of how to model the data. We find, among other things, that OTTR templates are especially useful as a means of communication with domain experts. Furthermore, we find that because OTTR templates encapsulate modeling decisions, the engineering process becomes flexible, meaning that design decisions can be changed at little cost.

翻译：OTTR是一种用于表示本体建模模式的语言，它通过实例化模板来构建本体或知识库。这使得本体表示语言的特性对领域专家隐藏，并使本体工程师能够在某种程度上将"决定建模什么信息"与"决定如何建模信息"（例如使用哪些设计模式）的流程分离开来。因此，某些决策可以被推迟，以便专注于其中一个流程。迄今为止，文献中仅有少数关于应用本体模板的本体工程研究。本文概述了我们的方法论，并报告了材料科学领域本体工程活动的发现。在这些活动中，OTTR模板发挥着关键作用。我们的本体工程流程既是自下而上的——我们从现有数据开始建模活动，通过模板将数据输入知识图谱；也是自上而下的——我们首先关注要建模哪些数据，而将如何建模数据的决策推迟。我们发现，OTTR模板尤其适合作为与领域专家沟通的工具。此外，由于OTTR模板封装了建模决策，工程流程变得灵活，这意味着设计决策可以以较低的成本进行更改。