A New Paradigm for Biomedical Ontology Development

Introduction

The OBO Foundry is a collaborative experiment, involving a group of ontology developers who have agreed in advance to the adoption of a growing set of principles specifying best practices in ontology development. These principles are designed to foster interoperability of ontologies within the broader OBO framework, and also to ensure a gradual improvement of quality and formal rigor in ontologies, in ways designed to meet the increasing needs of data and information integration in the biomedical domain.

 

By joining the OBO Foundry, the authors of an ontology commit to its maintenance in light of scientific advance, and to soliciting community feedback for its improvement. They also give an assurance that they will work with other Foundry members to ensure that, for any particular domain, there is community convergence on a single reference ontology. Application ontologies developed for specific purposes can then be referred back to this common reference, which will be updated in light of scientific advance. In this way application ontologies, too, for example the application ontologies developed for purposes of managing clinical trial data, can take advantage of the Foundry methodology.

Principles

(Version as of 24 April 2006.) Further principles will be added over time.

1. The ontology is open and available to be used by all without any constraint other than (1) its origin must be acknowledged and (2) it is not to be altered and subsequently redistributed under the original name or with the same identifiers.

2. The ontology is in, or can be expressed in, a common formal language. A provisional list of languages supported by OBO is provided at http://obo.sf.net/

3. The ontology possesses a unique identifier space within OBO.

4. The ontology provider has procedures for identifying distinct successive versions.

5. The ontology has a clearly specified and clearly delineated content.

6. The ontology includes textual definitions for all terms.

7. The ontology uses relations which are unambiguously defined following the pattern of definitions laid down in the OBO Relation Ontology.

8. The ontology is well-documented.

9. The ontology has a plurality of independent users.

10. The ontologies in the OBO Foundry will be developed in a collaborative effort.

Initial Candidate Members of the OBO Foundry

Environment Ontology

Behavior Ontology

Biomedical Image Ontology

Clinical Trial Ontology