KSL conducted research in the areas of knowledge representation and automated reasoning in the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University. KSL work focused on enabling technology for the Semantic Web, hybrid reasoning, explaining answers from heterogeneous applications, deductive question-answering, representing and reasoning with multiple contexts, knowledge aggregation, ontology engineering, and knowledge-based technology for intelligence analysts and other knowledge workers.
KSL was led by Deborah L. McGuinness, now the Tetherless World Senior Constellation Chair and Professor of Computer and Cognitive Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
The Stanford KSL web portal was taken down Spring 2024. This is an archival site, based on a pull from the Internet Archive during April 2024.
Past KSL Projects
Links are to Internet Archive archival pages...
KSL Software and Services
Links are to Internet Archive archival pages...
SWSL The Semantic Web Services Language (SWSL) is used to specify formal characterizations of Web service concepts and descriptions of individual services. More specifically, SWSL is a general-purpose logical language, with certain features to make it usable with the basic languages and infrastructure of the Web. These features include URIs, integration of XML built-in types, and XML-compatible namespace and import mechanisms. (Contacts, Deborah L. McGuinness, Sheila McIlraith).
OWL-S OWL-S supplies Web service providers with a core set of markup language constructs for describing the properties and capabilities of their Web services in unambiguous, computer-intepretable form. OWL-S markup of Web services will facilitate the automation of Web service tasks including automated Web service discovery, execution, interoperation, composition and execution monitoring. Following the layered approach to markup language development, the current version of OWL-S builds on top of OWL. (Contacts, Deborah L. McGuinness, Sheila McIlraith).
TAP The TAP project is building a Semantic Web of data by providing query interfaces, publishing models, semantic negotiation techniques, and a large amount of software for publishing and querying the machine-readble web. Special emphasis is placed on utilization of existing Internet data sources, and on defining the minimal constraints that must be placed upon the data to ensure many-to-many connectivity and interoperability.
Inference Web Inference Web is a framework for explaining Semantic Web reasoning tasks by storing, exchanging, abstracting, combining, annotating, comparing and rendering proofs and proof fragments provided by reasoners embedded in Semantic Web applications and facilities. Direct link to archival list of Inference Web publications.
JTP Theorem Prover. JTP is a java implementation of a model elimination theorem prover for full first order logic as well as context logic. This is a small, but fairly efficient theorem prover based on Stickel's PTTP (prolog technology theorem prover) method. It is easy to extend and easy to embed in a larger application.
Ontolingua Server Provides a distributed collaborative environment to browse, create, edit, modify, and use ontologies. The server supports over 150 active users, some of whom have provided us with descriptions of their projects.
Chimaera Chimaera helps you reorganize the taxonomy and resolve name conflicts in a KB - especially useful when merging KBs, but also useful as an ontology browser and ontological sketchpad.
Open Knowledge Base Connectivity (OKBC) OKBC is an API and reference implementation that allows representation system, platform and language-independent knowledge-level communication. OKBC was developed jointly by the KSL and the AI center at SRI int., to allow knowledge application authors to write representation system-independent tools, and to allow knowledge authors to publish their knowledge.
KSL People
You can find the extensive list of KSL alumni on the Internet Archive...
Selected KSL Publications
Links are to Internet Archive archival PDFs...Only KSL publications with DLM as co-author are shown...
Glass, A.; McGuinness, D.L.; Pinheiro da Silva, P.; Wolverton, M. Trustable Task Processing Systems. In Roth-Berghofer, T., and Richter, M.M., editors, KI Journal, Special Issue on Explanation, Kunstliche Intelligenz, 2008.
McGuinness, D.L.; Furtado, V.; Pinheiro da Silva, P.; Ding, L.; Glass, A.; Chang, C. Explaining Semantic Web Applications. In Cardoso, J., and Lytras, M.D., editors, Semantic Web Engineering in the Knowledge Society, Information Science Reference, IGI Global Press, 2008.
McGuinness, D.L.; Fox, P.; Cinquini, L.; West, P.; Garcia, J.; Benedict, J.L.; Middleton, D. The Virtual Solar-Terrestrial Observatory: A Deployed Semantic Web Application Case Study for Scientific Research. Proceedings of the Nineteenth Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-07), Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, July 22-26, 2007.
McGuinness, D.L.; Fox, P.; Cinquini, L.; West, P.; Garcia, J.; Benedict, J.L.; Middleton, D. A Deployed Semantically-Enabled Interdisciplinary Virtual Observatory. Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-07) Intelligent Systems Track, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, July 22-26, 2007.
McGuinness, D.L.; Glass, A.; Wolverton, M.; Pinheiro da Silva, P. Explaining Task Processing in Cognitive Assistants that Learn. Proceedings of the 20th International FLAIRS Conference (FLAIRS-20), Key West, Florida, May 7-9, 2007.
Glass, A.; McGuinness, D.L.; Wolverton, M. Toward Establishing Trust in Adaptive Agents. Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI2008), Canary Islands, Spain, January 13-16, 2008.
McGuinness, D.L.; Glass, A.; Wolverton, M.; Pinheiro da Silva, P. A Categorization of Explanation Questions for Task Processing Systems. Proceedings of the 2007 Workshop on Explanation-aware Computing (ExaCt-2007), Vancouver, Canada, July 22-23, 2007.
Furtado, V.; Pinheiro da Silva, P.; McGuinness, D.L.; Deshwal, P.; Narayanan, D.; Carvalho, J.; Pinheiro, V.; Chang, C. Abstracting Web Agent Proofs into Human-Level Justifications. Proceedings of the 20th International FLAIRS Conference (FLAIRS-20), Key West, Florida, May 7-9, 2007.
McGuinness, D.L.; Ding, L.; Pinheiro da Silva, P.; Chang, C. PML 2: A Modular Explanation Interlingua. Proceedings of the 2007 Workshop on Explanation-aware Computing (ExaCt-2007), Vancouver, Canada, July 22-23, 2007.
Kendall, E.F.; Jacobs, J.; McGuinness, D.L.; Schwab, S. Policies for Public Domain Ontologies for the Intelligence Community. Proceedings of the Ontology for the Intelligence Community Conference, Columbia, Maryland, November 28-29, 2007.
Fox, P.; McGuinness, D.L.; Raskin, R.; Sinha, K. A Volcano Erupts: Semantically Mediated Integration of Heterogeneous Volcanic and Atmospheric Data. Proceedings of the First Workshop on Cyberinfrastructure: Information Management in eScience, co-located with the ACM Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, Lisbon, Portugal, November 9, 2007.
Cowell, A.; McGuinness, D.L.; Varley, C.; Thurman, D. Knowledge-Worker Requirements for Next Generation Query Answering and Explanation Systems. In the Proceedings of the Workshop on Intelligent User Interfaces for Intelligence Analysis, International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI 2006), Sydney, Australia. 2006.
Weitzner, D.J.; Abelson, H.; Berners-Lee, T.; Hanson, C.P.; Hendler, J.; Kagal, L.; McGuinness, D.L.; Sussman, G.J.; Waterman, K.K. Transparent Accountable Data Mining: New Strategies for Privacy Protection. Proceedings of AAAI Spring Symposium on The Semantic Web meets eGovernment. AAAI Press, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA, 2006.
Glass, A.; McGuinness, D.L. Introspective Predicates for Explaining Task Execution in CALO. Technical Report. 2006.
McGuinness, D.L.; Zeng, H.; Pinheiro da Silva, P.; Ding, L.; Narayanan, D.; Bhaowal, M. Investigations into Trust for Collaborative Information Repositories: A Wikipedia Case Study. The Workshop on the Models of Trust for the Web (MTW'06), Edinburgh, Scotland, May 22, 2006. 2006.
McGuinness, D.L.; Glass, A.; Wolverton, M.; Pinheiro da Silva, P. Explaining Task Processing in Cognitive Assistants that Learn. Proceedings of the AAAI 2007 Spring Symposium on Interaction Challenges for Intelligent Assistants March, 2007.
Zeng, H.; Alhossaini, M.; Ding, L.; Fikes, R.; McGuinness, D.L. Computing Trust from Revision History. The 2006 International Conference on Privacy, Security and Trust (PST 2006) Markham, Ontario, Canada October 30 -- November 1, 2006.
Pinheiro, V.; Furtado, V.; Pinheiro da Silva, P.; McGuinness, D.L. WebExplain: A UPML Extension to Support the Development of Explanations on the Web for Knowledge-based Systems. The 18th International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering 2006.
McGuinness, D.L.; Ding, L.; Glass, A.; Chang, C.; Zeng, H.; Furtado, V. Explanation Interfaces for the Semantic Web: Issues and Models. Proceedings of the 3rd International Semantic Web User Interaction Workshop (SWUI'06) November , 2006.
Zeng, H.; Alhossaini, M.; Fikes, R.; McGuinness, D.L. Mining Revision History to Assess Trustworthiness of Article Fragments. The 2nd International Conference on Collaborative Computing: Networking, Applications and Worksharing (collaboratecom'06) Atlanta, Georgia, USA, November 17th - 20th, 2006.
Murdock, J. W.; McGuinness, D.L.; Pinheiro da Silva, P.; Welty, C.; Ferrucci, D. Explaining Conclusions from Diverse Knowledge Sources. the 5th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2006) Athens, Georgia, USA, November 5th - 9th, 2006.
McGuinness, D.L.; Fox, P.; Cinquini, L.; West, P.; Benedict, J.; Darnell, J.A.; Garcia, J.; Middleton, D. Semantically-Enabled Virtual Observatories. OWL: Experiences and Direction (OWLED-2006) workshop, Athens, Georgia, USA, November 10th - 11th, 2006.
Fox, P.; McGuinness, D.L.; Middleton, D.; Cinquini, L.; Darnell, J.A.; Garcia, J.; West, P.; Benedict, J.; Solomon, S. Semantically-Enabled Large-Scale Science Data Repositories. the 5th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC06), Athens, Georgia, USA, November 5th - 9th, 2006.
McGuinness, D.L; Fox, P.; Cinquini, L.; Darnell, T.; West, P.; Benedict, J.; Garcia, J.; Middleton, D. Ontology-Enabled Virtual Observatories: Semantic Integration in Practice. the 5th International Semantic Web Conference Poster Session (ISWC06), Athens, Georgia, USA, November 5th - 9th, 2006.
Martin, D.; Burstein, M.; McDermott, D.; McGuinness, D.L.; McIlraith, S.; Paolucci, M.; Sirin, E.; Srinivasan, N.; Sycara, K. Bringing Semantics to Web Services with OWL-S. World Wide Web Journal (to appear). 2006.
Pinheiro da Silva, P.; Hayes, P.; McGuinness, D. L.; Fikes, R.; & Deshwal, P. Towards Checking Hybrid Proofs. Technical Report, Knowledge Systems, AI Laboratory, Stanford University., 2005.
Pinheiro, V.; Furtado, V.; Pinheiro da Silva, P.; McGuinness, D. L. Explaining Problem Solver Answers. Technical Report, Knowledge Systems, AI Laboratory, Stanford University., 2005.
McGuinness, D.L.; Pinheiro da Silva, P.; Murdock, J. W.; & Ferrucci, D. Exposing Extracted Knowledge Supporting Answers. Technical Report, Knowledge Systems, AI Laboratory, Stanford University., 2005.
Welty, C.; Murdock, J. W.; Pinheiro da Silva, P.; McGuinness, D.L.; Ferrucci, D.; Fikes, R. Tracking Information Extraction from Intelligence Documents. In Proceedings of the 2005 International Conference on Intelligence Analysis (IA 2005), McLean, VA, USA, 2-6 May, 2005. 2005.
Ding, L.; Finin, T.; Peng, Y.; Pinheiro da Silva, P.; McGuinness, D.L. Tracking RDF Graph Provenance using RDF Molecules. Proceedings of the Fourth International Semantic Web Conference, November 2005. 2005.
Zeng, H.; McGuinness, D.L.; Pinheiro da Silva, P.; Fikes, R. Explaining Results from Information Retrieval and Integration. International Symposium on Explanation-aware Computing, AAAI Symposium, Washington, D.C., November 3-6, 2005 2005.
McGuinness, D.L.; Pinheiro da Silva, P.; Wolverton, M. Plan for Explaining Task Execution in CALO. Technical Report. 2005.
Pinheiro da Silva, P.; McGuinness, D. L.; & Fikes, R. E. A Proof Markup Language for Semantic Web Services. Technical Report, Knowledge Systems Laboratory, Stanford University., 2004.
Shvaiko, P.; Giunchiglia, F.; Pinheiro da Silva, P.; & McGuinness, D. L. Web Explanations for Semantic Heterogeneity Discovery. In Proceedings of the 2nd European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2005), pp 303-317, 2004.
McGuinness, D.L.; Pinheiro da Silva, P. Explaining Answers from the Semantic Web: The Inference Web Approach. Journal of Web Semantics Vol.1 No.4, pages 397-413, October 2004.
Pinheiro da Silva, P.; Hayes, P.; McGuinness, D. L.; & Fikes, R. PPDR: A Proof Protocol for Deductive Reasoning. Technical Report, Knowledge Systems Laboratory, Stanford University., 2004, 2004.
Murdock, J. W.; Pinheiro da Silva, P.; Ferrucci, D.; Welty, C.; & McGuinness, D. L. Encoding Extraction as Inferences. 2004.
Zaihrayeu, I.; Pinheiro da Silva, P.; & McGuinness, D. L. IWTrust: Improving User Trust in Answers from the Web. Rocquencourt, France, 2005., 2004.
McGuinness, D.L.; Pinheiro da Silva, P. Inference Web: Portable Explanations for the Web. Knowledge Systems Laboratory, January, 2003.
McGuinness, D.L.; Pinheiro da Silva, P. Registry-Based Support for Information Integration. Knowledge Systems Laboratory, March, 2003.
Pinheiro da Silva, P.; McGuinness, D.L.; Fikes, R. Combinable Proof Fragments for the Web. Knowledge Systems Laboratory, January, 2003.
McCool, R.; Fikes, R.; & McGuinness, D. Semantic Web Tools for Enhanced Authoring. KSL, 2003.
McGuinness, D. L. Knowledge Representation for Question Answering. In the Proceedings of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence Spring Symposium Workshop on New Directions for Question Answering. Stanford University, Stanford, CA., March 2003., 2003.
McGuinness, D.L.; Pinheiro da Silva, P. Inference Web: Portable and Shareable Explanations for Question Answering. In the Proceedings of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence Spring Symposium Workshop on New Directions for Question Answering. Stanford University, Stanford, CA., March 2003, 2003.
Hsu, E.; McGuinness, D.L. Wine Agent: Semantic Web Testbed Application. Proceedings of the Workshop on Description Logics, Rome, Italy, 2003.
Fikes, R.; McGuinness, D.L.; & Waldinger, R. A First-Order Logic Semantics for Semantic Web Markup Languages. Knowledge Systems Laboratory, January, 2002.
McGuinness, D. L.; Fikes, R.; Hendler, J.; & Stein, L. A. DAML+OIL: An Ontology Language for the Semantic Web. IEEE Intelligent Systems, Vol. 17, No. 5, September/October 2002, 2002.
Kendall, E. F.; Dutra, M. E.; & McGuinness, D.L. Towards A Commercial Ontology Development Environment. In International Semantic Web Conference Late Breaking Topics Sardinia, Italy, June 9-12, 2002., 2002.
McGuinness, D. L. Description Logic for Configuration. In Franz Baader, Deborah McGuinness, Daniele Nardi, and Peter Patel-Schneider, editors The Description Logic Handbook: Theory, Implementation, and Applications. Cambridge University Press, 2002, 2002.
McGuinness, D. L. & Patel-Schneider, P. From Description Logic Provers to Knowledge Representation Systems. In Franz Baader, Deborah McGuinness, Daniele Nardi, and Peter Patel-Schneider, editors The Description Logic Handbook: Theory, Implementation, and Applications. Cambridge University Press, 2002, 2002.
Horrocks, I.; McGuinness, D.L.; & Welty, C. Digital Libraries and Web-Based Information Systems. In Franz Baader, Deborah McGuinness, Daniele Nardi, and Peter Patel-Schneider, editors The Description Logic Handbook: Theory, Implementation, and Applications. Cambridge University Press., 2002, 2002.
McGuinness, D. L. Ontologies Come of Age. In Dieter Fensel, Jim Hendler, Henry Lieberman, and Wolfgang Wahlster, editors. Spinning the Semantic Web: Bringing the World Wide Web to Its Full Potential. MIT Press, 2002, 2002.
McGuinness, D. L.; Fikes, R.; Stein, L. A.; & Hendler, J. DAML-ONT: An Ontology Language for the Semantic Web. In Dieter Fensel, Jim Hendler, Henry Lieberman, and Wolfgang Wahlster, editors. Spinning the Semantic Web: Bringing the World Wide Web to Its Full Potential. MIT Press, 2002, 2002.
Fikes, R. & McGuinness, D.L. An Axiomatic Semantics for RDF, RDF Schema, and DAML+OIL. Knowledge Systems Laboratory, January, 2001.
Lassila, O. & McGuinness, D.L. The Role of Frame-Based Representation on the Semantic Web. Knowledge Systems Laboratory, January, 2001.
McGuinness, D. L. Ontologies and Online Commerce. IEEE Intelligent Systems, Vol. 16, No. 1, January/ February, 2001.
Noy, N. F. & McGuinness, D. L. Ontology Development 101: A Guide to Creating Your First Ontology. Knowledge Systems Laboratory, March, 2001.
McGuinness, D. L.; Fensel, D.; Horrocks, I.; Harmelen, F. v.; & Patel-Schneider, P. F. OIL: An Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IEEE Intelligent Systems, Vol. 16, No. 2, March/April, 2001.
McGuinness, D. L. Ontologies Come of Age. Knowledge Systems Laboratory, 2001.
McGuinness, D. L.; Fikes, R.; Stein, L. A.; & Hendler, J. DAML-ONT: An Ontology Language for the Semantic Web. Knowledge Systems Laboratory, 2001.
Das, A.; Wu, W.; & McGuinness, D.L. Industrial Strength Ontology Management. In Isabel Cruz, Stefan Decker, Jerome Euzenat, and Deborah L. McGuinness, eds. The Emerging Semantic Web, 2001, 2001.
Fensel, D.; Horrocks, I.; Harmelen, F. v.; McGuinness, D.L.; & Patel-Schneider., P. F. OIL: An Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. In IEEE Intelligent Systems, Vol. 16, No. 2, March/April 2001, 2001.
McGuinness, D. L. Ontologies and Online Commerce. In IEEE Intelligent Systems, Vol. 16, No. 1, January/February 2001, 2001.
McGuinness, D. L. Conceptual Modeling for Distributed Ontology Environments. In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Conceptual Structures Logical, Linguistic, and Computational Issues, Darmstadt, Germany, August, 2000.
McGuinness, D. L.; Fikes, R.; Rice, J.; & Wilder, S. An Environment for Merging and Testing Large Ontologies. Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR2000), Breckenridge, Colorado, April, 2000.
McGuinness, D. L.; Fikes, R.; Rice, J.; & Wilder, S. The Chimaera Ontology Environment. Proceedings of the The Seventeenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2000), July 30-August 3, 2000.
Hendler, J. & McGuinness, D.L. The DARPA Agent Markup Language. IEEE Intelligent Systems Vol. 15 No. 6, November/December, 2000.
McGuinness, D. L. Ontologies for Electronic Commerce. Proceedings of the AAAI '99 Artificial Intelligence for Electronic Commerce Workshop, Orlando, Florida, July, 1999.
McGuinness, D. L. Ontology-enhanced Search for Primary Care Medical Literature. Prodeedings of the International Medical Informatics Association Working Group 6 - Medical Concept Representation and Natural Language Processing Conference, Phoenix, Arizona, December, 1999.
Brachman, R. J.; Borgida, A.; McGuinness, D.L.; & Patel-Schneider, P. F. "Reducing" CLASSIC to Practice: Knowledge Representation Theory Meets Reality. Artificial Intelligence 114 (1-2), October, 1999.
Baader, F.; Borgida, A.; Kuesters, R.; & McGuinness, D.L. Matching in Description Logics. Journal of Logic and Computation -- Special Issue on Description Logics. Volume 9, number 3, June, 1999.
Franconi, E.; Giacomo, G. d.; Horrocks, I.; McGuinness, D.L.; Nutt, W.; Patel-Schneider, P.; & Welty, C. Report on the 1998 International Workshop on Description Logics DL'98. Journal of Logic and Computation - Special Issue on Description Logics, Volume 9, number 3, Link�ping, Sweden, June, 1999.
Borgida, A.; Franconi, E.; Horrocks, I.; McGuinness, D.L.; & Patel-Schneider, P. Explaining ALC subsumption. Proceedings of the International Workshop on Description Logics - DL-99, Link�ping, Sweden, July, 1999.
MacGregor, R. & McGuinness, D. L. DARPA's High Performance Knowledge Base (HPKB) Program. Proceedings for the International Workshop on Description Logics - DL - 99, Link�ping, Sweden, July, 1999.
McGuinness, D. L. & Wright, J. Conceptual Modeling for Configuration: A Description Logic-based Approach. Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis, and Manufacturing Journal - Special Issue on Configuration, 1998.
McGuinness, D.; Patel-Schnedier, P.; Resnick, L. A.; Isbell, C.; Parker, M.; & Welty, C. A Description Logic Based Configurator for the Web. SIGART Bulletin, 9(2), Fall, 1998.
Darr, T.; Fox, M.; & McGuinness, D.L. Special Configuration Issue of the Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis, and Manufacturing Journal. Artificial Intelligence for Engineering, Design, Analysis, and Manufacturing Journal, 1998.
McGuinness, D. L. & Wright, J. An Industrial Strength Description Logic-based Configurator Platform. IEEE Intelligent Systems. Vol 13, No. 4, July/August, 1998.