Open AccessOntology based document enrichment in bioinformatics
Author(s) -
Stevens Robert
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
comparative and functional genomics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1532-6268
pISSN - 1531-6912
DOI - 10.1002/cfg.141
Subject(s) - ontology , computer science , controlled vocabulary , vocabulary , open biomedical ontologies , annotation , usability , domain (mathematical analysis) , information retrieval , representation (politics) , knowledge representation and reasoning , world wide web , process ontology , data science , semantic web , suggested upper merged ontology , artificial intelligence , human–computer interaction , mathematical analysis , linguistics , philosophy , mathematics , epistemology , politics , political science , law
Controlled vocabularies are common within bioinformatics resources. Theycan be used to give a summary of the knowledge held about a particular entity.They are also used to constrain values given for particular attributes ofan entity. This helps create a shared understanding of a domain and aids increasedprecision and recall during querying of resources. Ontologies can also providesuch facilities, but can also enhance their utility. Controlled vocabulariesare often simply lists of words, but may be viewed as a kind of ontology.Ideally ontologies are structurally enriched with relationships between termswithin the vocabulary. Use of such rich forms of vocabularies in databaseannotation could enhance those resources usability by both humans and computers.The representation of the knowledge content of biological resources in a computationallyaccessible form opens the prospect of greater support for a biologist investigatingnew data. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.