A key challenge in agriculture, as in other disciplines, is taking a large body of research-based knowledge and making it meaningful to the user-audience. Computer aided search engines potentially can offer widespread access to large repositories with relevant reports and publications, however the usefulness of such systems for the practitioners who are dealing with multi-faceted and context-related issues is often limited. Building search engines with user-centered ontologies offer a means of resolving this as it provides a vocabulary common to different stakeholders and can optimise the interaction between practitioner users and the expert system.

The paper critically reflects on the methodology used to construct a user-centered ontology in the development of a search engine designed to help agricultural practitioners (farmers and advisers) find useful research outputs. This involved the iterative participation of domain experts, adviser practitioners and stakeholder communities in ten diverse case studies across Europe. Specifically it analyses the design, validation and evaluation phases of the ontology development drawing on qualitative data (reports, observations, interviews) from four case studies and asks: How effective is the process of co-constructing an ontology with experts, practitioners and other stakeholders in enabling the search for useful and meaningful knowledge? In doing this, it contributes to a deeper theoretical understanding of shared concepts and meanings in the context of digital communications in the agricultural arena by adapting Carlile’s (2004) framework of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic capacities.

与其他学科一样，农业面临的主要挑战是吸收大量基于研究的知识并使之对用户群体有意义。计算机辅助的搜索引擎可能可以广泛地访问具有相关报告和出版物的大型存储库，但是，这种系统对于处理多方面和与上下文相关的问题的从业人员的实用性通常受到限制。使用以用户为中心的本体构建搜索引擎可以解决该问题，因为它提供了不同利益相关者通用的词汇表，并且可以优化从业者用户与专家系统之间的交互。

该论文批判性地反思了在搜索引擎开发中用于构建以用户为中心的本体的方法，该搜索引擎旨在帮助农业从业者（农民和顾问）找到有用的研究成果。这涉及领域专家，顾问从业人员和利益相关者社区反复参与整个欧洲的十个不同案例研究。具体来说，它利用来自四个案例研究的定性数据（报告，观察，访谈）来分析本体开发的设计，验证和评估阶段，并提出以下问题：与专家，从业者和其他利益相关者共同构建本体的过程有多有效？有助于寻找有用和有意义的知识？这样，