Out of Scope Terms

In designing and building ontologies, one seeks to find a coherent domain for the ontology – a set of terms that are useful in representing the entities of the domain, include and reuse terms from other ontologies as appropriate, while not including terms that belong elsewhere. These choices are somewhat arbitrary, as long as we have a cler view of the domain we are attempting to represent, and we are willing to “give away” terms that we included, but can be reused.

For the Organization Ontology, we adhered as best we could to several guiding principles regarding terms, domains, inclusion and exclusion.

And, of course, we may have a change of heart regarding any term or set of terms.

Out of Scope but Defined Here

Locations

It is important for organizations and their facilities to be located on the surface of the earth. We found the existing OBI ontologies ENVO and GAZ to have inconsistencies and/or complexities that prohibited their reuse. We created a simple set of terms within the Organization Ontology to define a nested set of locations from continents down to rooms that can have geographical representations (latitude and longitude) attached to them.

We would be happy to use terms from another ontology that defines location terms we could use.

Facilities

The Organization Ontology has a need to make assertions regarding occupancy of structures

Out of Scope and Included Here

An organization ontology should reuse terms it needs from other ontologies.

Upper Level Ontology and Annotation Properties

Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) is used for an upper level ontology. We use the Information Artifact Ontology (IAO) annotation properties to annotate terms. We use Dublin Core and OWL annotation properties annotate the ontology.

Identifiers

The Identifier Ontology 1 defines identifiers and semantics for using identifiers to identify organizations, people, and scholarly works.

Information Artifacts

The Information Artifact Ontology (IAO) defines information artifacts needed here.

Time

The W3C Time Ontology (Time) is used to define time:Instant and associated properties for using time:Instant. We have asserted a superclass for time:Instant to align it with BFO.

Concept

The Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) issued to define skos:Concept. We have asserted a superclass for skos:Concept to align it with BFO.

Out of Scope and Not Included Here

Reports to / has report

reports to / has report are properties in the W3C Organization Ontology for asserting that individual people report to other individual people in an organization.

We believe these are out of scope for an organization ontology, and are best left to an administrative ontology.

has attendee / attendee of

We say a person attended a university. Ontologically, we mean a person participated in an educational process at a university. Representation of teaching and learning is out of scope for the Organization Ontology. Similarly has alum / alum of also belong in a teaching and learning ontology.

relationship

VIVO 1 had an entity, relationship, that is currently missing in the OBO ontologies. We have not added it to the Organization Ontology, as it is out of scope here. Several entities are defined in terms of relationships and should eventually have relationship as a super class. For now, these are defined here as simply occurents.

Additional detail regarding locations

We have tried to include enough, but not too much. This is not a locations ontology. 2

Additional detail regarding structures

We have tried to include enough, but not too much. This is not a structures ontology. 3.

Properties related to Academic Events

We have not included properties related to organizations must host, sponsor or otherwise participate in. See The Academic Event Ontology for terms associating organizations and academic events.

Footnotes

1

The Identifier Ontology is underdevelopment as a planned expansion of Information Artifact Ontology (IAO)

2

We follow in the footsteps of VIVO 1, including terms that have shown their value over a decade of use.

3

Same as the comment on locations.