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In the meantime, there has been a recent call in the eXplainable AI (XAI) field to use expert knowledge in the form of knowledge graphs and ontologies. In this paper, a parallel between explanations for machine learning and for ontologies is drawn. This link enables the adaptation of XAI methods to explain ontologies and their entailments. Counterfactual explanations have been identified as a good candidate to solve the explainability problem in machine learning. The CEO (Counterfactual Explanations for Ontologies) method is thus proposed to explain inconsistent ontologies using counterfactual explanations. A preliminary user study is conducted to ensure that using XAI methods for ontologies is relevant and worth pursuing.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3233\/sw-243566","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,3,8]],"date-time":"2024-03-08T10:21:16Z","timestamp":1709893276000},"page":"1611-1636","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["Towards counterfactual explanations for ontologies"],"prefix":"10.1177","volume":"15","author":[{"given":"Matthieu","family":"Bellucci","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"INSA Rouen Normandie, Univ Rouen Normandie, Universit\u00e9 Le Havre Normandie, Normandie Univ, LITIS UR 4108, F-76000, Rouen, France"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Nicolas","family":"Delestre","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"INSA Rouen Normandie, Univ Rouen Normandie, Universit\u00e9 Le Havre Normandie, Normandie Univ, LITIS UR 4108, F-76000, Rouen, France"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Nicolas","family":"Malandain","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"INSA Rouen Normandie, Univ Rouen Normandie, Universit\u00e9 Le Havre Normandie, Normandie Univ, LITIS UR 4108, F-76000, Rouen, France"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Cecilia","family":"Zanni-Merk","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"INSA Rouen Normandie, Univ Rouen Normandie, Universit\u00e9 Le Havre Normandie, Normandie Univ, LITIS UR 4108, F-76000, Rouen, France"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"179","reference":[{"key":"10.3233\/SW-243566_ref1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.29007\/nhpp"},{"key":"10.3233\/SW-243566_ref2","unstructured":"C.\u00a0Alrabbaa, S.\u00a0Borgwardt, T.\u00a0Friese, P.\u00a0Koopmann, J.\u00a0M\u00e9ndez and A.\u00a0Popovi\u010d, On the eve of true explainability for OWL ontologies: Description logic proofs with Evee and Evonne, Proc. 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