Domains with large amounts of data often structure their knowledge using machine-readable frameworks, guidelines and languages that are called ontologies. Once standardised, ontologies enable data to flow freely between different systems and domains.
Ontology standards need to achieve broad consensus among domain experts before they are adopted. They serve to improve the performance of AI services, and enable better collaboration between teams by setting out agreed definitions of key vocabulary.
What are the benefits of ontology standards?
Ontology standards help systems to work smoothly together, which is referred to as interoperability. They make it easier to re-use ontologies for different projects. They also ensure that key words have the same meanings across different systems, tools, and domains, which is known as semantic consistency. This reduces the risk of misunderstandings, especially among multidisciplinary or multinational teams.
Standards help make ontologies scalable and maintainable. Applications such as data integration, AI-driven knowledge discovery, and cross-disciplinary research all depend on ontology standards. A 2024 study published in Advanced Engineering Materials explored how ontology standards improve the quality of intelligent systems in materials science.
What are lightweight ontology standards?
Lightweight ontologies are simplified structures used for basic classification, labelling, and linking tasks. They typically lack formal logic and are not designed for deep automated reasoning. This makes them easier to maintain and more accessible to domain experts without deep semantic expertise. They are also faster to develop. Ontologies built with SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organisation System) or vocabularies like Dublin Core are often considered lightweight due to their minimal complexity.
What are heavyweight ontology standards?
Heavyweight ontologies, on the other hand, represent a higher degree of semantic richness. They support complex class hierarchies, relationships, axioms, and constraints. Built with standards like OWL (Web Ontology Language), heavyweight ontologies enable automated reasoning and inference. This makes them suitable for sophisticated AI applications and scientific modelling, indicators of high domain intelligence.
What are the main ontology standards?
Ontology standards are essential in domains like the semantic web, knowledge graphs, and bioinformatics. They simplify the creation, sharing and managing of ontologies. They underpin legacy ontology software tools as well as modern ontology-as-a-service (OaaS) platforms which are used by vertical AI teams, researchers and businesses.
OWL and RDF
OWL (Web Ontology Language) and RDF (Resource Description Framework) are two of the most widely adopted ontology standards. RDF provides a basic data model for making statements about resources, serving as the foundation for semantic web technologies. OWL builds on RDF. It adds greater expressivity for defining complex relationships and supporting reasoning over data.
SKOS and Dublin Core
SKOS is a standard designed for representing simple knowledge structures like taxonomies, thesauri, and classification schemes. It focuses on concepts, preferred labels, alternative labels, and basic relationships between concepts. It is widely used in libraries, archives, and digital repositories.
Dublin Core is a metadata vocabulary used to describe digital resources such as documents, images, and datasets. It includes basic descriptive elements like ‘creator’, ‘title’, ‘subject’, and ‘date’. It is often used alongside ontologies for resource annotation and cataloguing.
OBO and Gene Ontology
Biomedical researchers tend to use OBO (Open Biomedical Ontologies) and Gene Ontology (GO). OBO refers to both a collaborative community and a suite of interoperable ontology formats and principles designed for biological and medical data. It is not a single standard, but a framework that encourages consistency and reuse.
The Gene Ontology operates within the OBO ecosystem and is widely used to describe gene product attributes such as molecular function, biological processes, and cellular components.