Collaborative Development of Ontologies using BioPortal and WebProtégé

Patricia L. Whetzel, Natasha Noy, Tania Tudorache, Csongor Nyulas, and Mark A. MusenStanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

IntroductionDevelopment of ontologies requires an integrated platform that not only allows for ontology developers to collaboratively edit the ontology, but also allows for the collection of comments from subject matter experts. The integration of WebProtégé and BioPortal provides such an environment. Web Protégé is a lightweight Web-based ontology browser and editor, which provides a collaborative environment for editing. These features include the ability to simultaneously browse and edit the ontology, to discuss entities in the ontology (e.g. class, property, or individual), and to track all changes to the ontology. Once the cycle of edits is complete and a new version of the ontology is generated, many ontology developers choose to release their ontology by placing it on the Web for others to access the ontology and to collect comments from the community. BioPortal provides such a mechanism to publish ontologies and collect community feedback, in addition to a range of other functionality. Using the BioPortal Web services, the ontology and it’s metadata can be published directly to BioPortal. Subject matter experts can login to BioPortal, browse the ontology and add comments to entities and propose changes. The notes are stored in a common representation and therefore, the ontology editors can see the note in the context of editing the ontology and make the needed changes. Notes can be “archived” once the editing task is complete, which will then hide the note from view in BioPortal. Requirements for the implementation of an integrated editing platform for ontology development and publishing have been collected from review of existing tools and workflows of large collaborative ontology development projects. One of the main drivers and users of this collaborative platform is the World Health Organization in development of ICD-11.

AcknowledgementsBioPortal is developed by the National Center for Biomedical Ontology (NCBO), a National Center for Biomedical Computing under the NIH Roadmap. BioPortal is developed in conjunction with partners at the University of Victoria and the Mayo Clinic. For more information on NCBO see http://www.bioontology.org.

ContactBioPortal Support: support@bioontology.org Protégé/WebProtege: protege-discussion@lists.stanford.edu

BioPortal Ontology Library •Open ontology repository for publishing biomedical ontologies •Features

- Search across and within all ontologies- Browse ontologies- Provide feedback – Notes and Reviews

•Statistics- Total number of ontologies: 216- Number of classes/types: 1,438,792

•Supports many ontology formats: OWL, OBO format, Rich Release Format, Protégé frames

WebProtégé•Allows multiple users to:

- Edit an ontology simultaneously- Discuss design decisions- Make proposals- Analyze changes

WebProtégé

Term DetailsTerm

Details

Notes on Term

Notes on Term

Notes on

Branch

Notes on

Branch

BioPortal Notes

Notes Core API•The Notes Core API provides storage, and access mechanism for creating Notes linked to ontology elements •Notes are stored as an ontology of notes, including different types of proposals:

- Term requests- Property value changes- Hierarchy changes- Retirement of concepts

THE NATIONAL CENTER FORBIOMEDICAL ONTOLOGY

Ontology Development Lifecycle •Involves both Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and Ontology Developers•Consists of:

- Discussion between SMEs and Ontology Developers- Ontology Editing - Publishing Ontology to the Web- Collect Feedback on Published Ontology

Collect information from Subject Matter Experts

Draft prototype ontology

Get feedback from Subject Matter Experts

Refine Ontology based on feedbackPublish Ontology

Collect feedback from community

Develop new ontology version based on community feedback

BioPortal