Analyzing the Orthogonality of OBO Foundry Ontologies
Author Information
Author(s): Ghazvinian Amir, Noy Natalya F, Musen Mark A
Primary Institution: Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics Research, Stanford University
Hypothesis
Are the ontologies developed by the OBO Foundry community approaching orthogonality?
Conclusion
The OBO Foundry has made progress toward orthogonality, but significant overlap remains among the ontologies.
Supporting Evidence
- 30% of the ontologies reuse terms from other Foundry candidates.
- 96% of the candidate ontologies contain terms that overlap with terms from other ontologies.
- Term reuse increased among the ontologies between September 2009 and September 2010.
Takeaway
This study looked at how well different biomedical ontologies work together. They found that while some terms are reused, many terms still overlap, making it hard to achieve a perfect system.
Methodology
A lexical algorithm was used to analyze term reuse and overlap among OBO Foundry candidate ontologies over three snapshots taken from September 2009 to September 2010.
Limitations
The analysis may not capture all overlaps due to the limitations of lexical matching, and small ontologies can skew results.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
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