Harnessing the power of unified metadata in an ontology repository: The case of AgroPortal

As any resources, ontologies, thesaurus, vocabularies and terminologies need to be described with relevant metadata to facilitate their identification, selection and reuse. For ontologies to be FAIR, there is a need for metadata authoring guidelines and for harmonization of existing metadata vocabularies—taken independently none of them can completely describe an ontology. Ontology libraries and repositories also have to play an important role. Indeed, some metadata properties are intrinsic to the ontology (name, license, description); other information, such as community feedbacks or relations to other ontologies are typically information that an ontology library shall capture, populate and consolidate to facilitate the processes of identifying and selecting the right ontology(ies) to use. We have studied ontology metadata practices by: (1) analyzing metadata annotations of 805 ontologies; (2) reviewing the most standard and relevant vocabularies (23 totals) currently available to describe metadata for ontologies (such as Dublin Core, Ontology Metadata Vocabulary, VoID, etc.); (3) comparing different metadata implementation in multiple ontology libraries or repositories. We have then built a new metadata model for our AgroPortal vocabulary and ontology repository, a platform dedicated to agronomy based on the NCBO BioPortal technology. AgroPortal now recognizes 346 properties from existing metadata vocabularies that could be used to describe different aspects of ontologies: intrinsic descriptions, people, date, relations, content, metrics, community, administration, and access. We use them to populate an internal model of 127 properties implemented in the portal and harmonized for all the ontologies. We—and AgroPortal's users—have spent a significant amount of time to edit and curate the metadata of the ontologies to offer a better synthetized and harmonized information and enable new ontology identification features. Our goal was also to facilitate the comprehension of the agronomical ontology landscape by displaying diagrams and charts about all the ontologies on the portal. We have evaluated our work with a user appreciation survey which confirms the new features are indeed relevant and helpful to ease the processes of identification and selection of ontologies. This paper presents how to harness the potential of a complete and unified metadata model with dedicated features in an ontology repository; however, the new AgroPortal's model is not a new vocabulary as it relies on preexisting ones. A generalization of this work is studied in a community-driven standardization effort in the context of the RDA Vocabulary and Semantic Services Interest Group

Construction et évolution de connaissances par confrontation de points de vue : prototype pour la recherche d'information scientifique

Avec le Web 2.0, les utilisateurs, devenus contributeurs, ont pris une place centrale dans les processus de consommation et de production de connaissances ; cependant la paternité des contributions est souvent perdue lors de l'indexation de l'information. Viewpoints est un formalisme de représentation des connaissances centré sur le point de vue individuel, humain ou artificiel. Nous considérons trois types d'objets de connaissance : les documents (supports), les agents (émetteurs) et les topics (descripteurs). Un viewpoint émis par un agent exprime son opinion sur la proximité entre deux objets. Les viewpoints permettent de définir et de calculer une distance entre objets qui évolue au fil des interactions (requêtes et retours d'utilisation) et de l'ajout de nouveaux viewpoints. Un prototype de moteur de recherche pour des données de publications scientifiques tirées de HAL-LIRMM montre comment Viewpoints peut faire émerger, de façon transparente, une intelligence collective à partir des interactions des utilisateurs contributeurs. (Résumé d'auteur

Ontology Repositories and Semantic Artefact Catalogues with the OntoPortal Technology

Il y a une explosion dans le nombre d’ontologies et d’artefacts sémantiques. Cet article traite de la nécessité pour les plateformes communes de recevoir, héberger, servir, aligner et activer leur réutilisation. Les catalogues sont nécessaires pour répondre à ce besoin et faire des ontologies FAIR (Findable, Accessible, interopérable et réutilisable)

— SCIENCES ET TECHNIQUES DU LANGUEDOC —

présentée à l’Université des Sciences et Techniques du Languedoc pour obtenir le diplôme de DOCTORA