7/28/2019 Ontology Alignment for Linking a Homegrown Research Networking System to VIVO (Poster)

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Introduction

VIVO ontology

Recommended as the standard ontology for developing open RNSs by

the CTSA strategic goal committee in 2011

Defines profiles of researchers including events, courses, facilities,

person contact, publications, grants, etc.

Able to localize information at an institutional level

Columbia University Scientist Profiles (CUSP)

Columbia University began developing its own RNS, CUSP, since 2006

(http://irvinginstitute.columbia.edu/cusp)1

Need to remodel CUSP to be interoperable with VIVO instead of

creating a new instance of VIVO from scratch

ResearchGate

A popular, open-source social networking tool for researchers

(http://www.researchgate.net)

Used as a comparison reference to assess the popularity of different

modeling decisions

Ontology Alignment for Linking a Homegrown Research Networking Syst

Findings and Implications for Standards DevelopmentYoung Ji Lee, RN, MS1, Mary Regina Boland, MA2, Suzanne Bakken, RN, PhD1,2,3, Chunhua Weng, PhD2,3

1School of Nursing, 2Department of Biomedical Informatics, 3The Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, Columbia Uni

Aims

Aims of the study are 1) to evaluate VIVO to meet a set of formal

ontological principles, 2) to assess the feasibility for pre-VIVO research

networking systems (RNSs) to adopt and transition to VIVO and 3) to

assess the popularity of different modeling decisions.

Method1. Two authors (YL, MB) manually aligned the classes and attributes

among CUSP, VIVO, and ResearchGate.

Identified classes and attributes with the same meaning shared by

the models

Identified classes and attributes unique to one of the models and

describe their uses and rationale

Analyzed the structural or semantic differences for the classes and

attributes unique to only one model

2. Used Noys ontology development guideline to examine the

appropriateness of the modeling decisions made in the VIVO ontology2

Figure 1. Classes in VIVO Figure 2. A CUSP screenshot

CUSP VIVO ResearchGate

Class: Organizations Class: Organization Class: Institution

Attribute: has contact information Attribute: (primary email, mailing address,webpage)

Attribute: has personnel Attribute: has current member

Attribute: has specification (department,

center, initiative)

Has sub organization (department and

center are also subclasses)

Attribute: has department

Attribute: has grants Attribute: administers

Attribute: year

Attribute: location

Violated Ontology Design Principle Examples that Violate the Rule

All the siblings in the hierarchy must be at the same level of

generality.

EmeritusFaculty subsumes EmeritusProfessor, but the two were

placed at the same level of the class hierarchy

If there are more than a dozen subclasses for a given class then

additional intermediate categories may be necessary

Class Role has 12 subclasses that do not meet the disjointness

criterion: Attendee, Clinical, Editor, Leader, Member, Organizer,

OutreachProvider, Presenter, Researcher, Reviewer,

ServiceProvider, Teacher

The ontology should not contain all the possible properties of

and distinctions among classes in the hierarchy

DateTimeInterval, DateTimeValue, and DateTimeValuePrecision

Table 1. Matched classes and attributes between CUSP, VIVO and ResearchGate

Table 2. Selected Violated Ontological Design Principles and Examples