Abstract
The article provides a brief overview of the publication activity on the problems of building information systems for knowledge management. The research of publication activity was carried out on the materials reflected in the databases SCOPUS, Web of Science, Science Direct and RSCI. The article presents the thematic and specific distribution of publications, as well as the dynamics of publication activity in the development and use of ontologies. The analysis of approaches to the management of polythematic knowledge using ontologies is given. As an alternative to the thesaurus representation of knowledge, an approach based on the use of classification languages is proposed.