Annotation properties

Annotation properties provide text for readers of ontologies to explain the use of terms. Information Artifact Ontology (IAO) defines annotation properties used throughout the VIVO ontologies for defining terms. Table 5 Classes lists the IAO properties used to annotate terms in the ontologies. Table 6 Annotation Properties lists the terms in the controlled vocabulary for curation status. To assert that a term’s metadata is complete, the assertion is:

<term> IAO:0000114 IAO_0000120

Alternative terms (IAO_0000118) are not common in the VIVO ontologies. All other annotations are expected for all terms.

See Table 6.

Table 6 Annotation Properties

Term ID - Label	Definition
IAO_0000111 - editor preferred label	The concise, meaningful, and human-friendly name for a class or property preferred by the ontology developers. (US-English)
IAO_0000112 - example of usage	A phrase describing how a term should be used and/or a citation to a work which uses it. May also include other kinds of examples that facilitate immediate understanding, such as widely know prototypes or instances of a class, or cases where a relation is said to hold.
IAO_0000114 - has curation status	A specification of the state of the metadata for a term
IAO_0000115 - definition	The official definition, explaining the meaning of a class or property. Shall be Aristotelian, formalized and normalized. Can be augmented with colloquial definitions.
IAO_0000116 - editor note	An administrative note intended for its editor. It may not be included in the publication version of the ontology, so it should contain nothing necessary for end users to understand the ontology.
IAO_0000117 - term editor	Name of editor entering the term in the file. The term editor is a point of contact for information regarding the term. The term editor may be, but is not always, the author of the definition, which may have been worked upon by several people
IAO_0000118 - alternative term	An alternative name for a class or property which means the same thing as the preferred name (semantically equivalent)
IAO_0000119 - definition source	Formal citation, e.g. identifier in external database to indicate / attribute source(s) for the definition. Free text indicate / attribute source(s) for the definition. EXAMPLE: Author Name, URI, MeSH Term C04, PUBMED ID, Wiki uri on 31.01.2007
IAO_0000232 - curator note	An administrative note of use for a curator but of no use for a user
IAO_0000233 - term tracker item	An IRI or similar locator for a request or discussion of an ontology term.
IAO_0000412 - imported from	For external terms/classes, the ontology from which the term was imported
ORG_1000001 - vivo 1 ontology reference	The term in the original VIVO ontology that is most like the annotated term.

Table 12 Common Annotation Properties

Property	Label	Notes
IAO_0000112	example of usage	A phrase describing how a term should be used
IAO_0000114	has curation status	A term from a controlled vocabulary
IAO_0000115	definition	Explains the meaning of a term or property
IAO_0000116	editor note	An administrative note intended for the term editor
IAO_0000117	term editor	Name of the editor
IAO_0000118	alternative term	Alternative name for the term
IAO_0000119	definition source	Definition citation, may be a link to definition

Table 13 Curation Status

Property	Label	Notes
IAO_0000120	metadata complete	Term has all metadata, but may not be final
IAO_0000121	organizational term	Tags used to aid ontology development
IAO_0000122	ready for release	No further edits needed for term
IAO_0000123	metadata incomplete	Term is under development
IAO_0000124	uncurated	Name and class ID, little else
IAO_0000125	pending final vetting	Complete, awaiting final review
IAO_0000423	to be replaced with ext	The term is a placeholder and belongs elsewhere

Non IAO Annotation Properties

The VIVO ontologies use other annotation properties to describe terms and the ontologies.

rdfs:label is required for all terms and for the ontology itself. All labels must be unique. This greatly simplifies the use of the ontologies – one can search for the label and unambiguously find the corresponding term.

Ontology annotations

Several annotation are used to describe the ontology and are not used further.

terms:license is required for all ontologies. The license should be CC0 or CC-BY, no other restrictions are acceptable for use in the VIVO ontologies.

owl:versionIRI a URL identifying the ontology version

owl:versionInfo a text string identifying the ontology version

dc:created a date string specifying the date the ontology was originally created

dc:creator a text string with the name and URL of the creator of the ontology

dc:description a text description of the ontology, its domain, and purpose

dc:title the name of the ontology to be used in citations

rdfs:comment additional text describing the context of the ontology

Term annotations

The following annotations are used to describe terms that are imported to the ORG ontology. Most of these are substitutes for the standardized annotation properties describe above in Table 5 Classes.

skos:altLabel skos:definition skos:example skos:prefLabel skos:scopeNote

All

• IAO_0000111 - editor preferred label
• IAO_0000112 - example of usage
• IAO_0000114 - has curation status
• IAO_0000115 - definition
• IAO_0000116 - editor note
• IAO_0000117 - term editor
• IAO_0000118 - alternative term
• IAO_0000119 - definition source
• IAO_0000232 - curator note
• IAO_0000233 - term tracker item
• IAO_0000412 - imported from
• ORG_1000001 - vivo 1 ontology reference