Agora

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to propose an approach for describing and discovering knowledge resources in distributed environments.Design/methodology/approachThe paper proposes a solution that includes a framework model and a technological infrastructure to achieve distributed knowledge discovery. It provides the solution based on a combination of research from knowledge management and distributed processing areas.FindingsThe paper finds a faceted ontology and three discrete models that best achieve distributed processing in terms of knowledge items and knowledge objects. By these mechanisms are provided to: represent knowledge in a generic manner that will unchain knowledge from tight links to specific contexts, purposes and audiences; discover and retrieve knowledge stored in distributed sources; interpret different knowledge representations to enable comprehension of knowledge on the recipient side and tackle the heterogeneity problem; and simplify and accelerate knowledge exchange in distributed environments.Research limitations/implicationsThe utilization of knowledge in distributed environments (intra‐ or inter‐organizational) presupposes the existence of a representation of knowledge in a commonly understandable manner. Knowledge resources are distributed in the web and databases in an unstructured manner.Practical implicationsThe paper can be used as the basic consensus and infrastructure for the development of a coherent, manageable semantic web. The three models should be addressed in terms of commercial applications.Originality/valueKnowledge management and distributed processing research fields are combined in order to provide a solution that best addresses the problem of distributed knowledge.