This repo contains a minimal example of how ontologies could be published using github-pages while maintaining availability of definition files and documentation for older versions.
The requirements are specified in Technical requirements for ontologies and Additional requirements for publishing ontologies. The file ontology.ttl is a turtle serialization of an example ontology that conforms to the requirements given in the table.
The definition file for an ontology, which is actively developed and thus changes its version number more or less frequently.
A workflow definition that does the following steps on push to main and develop:
- Build the html documentation and the ontologies alternate serializations for the current version
- add the current versions documentation and serializations to gh-pages, maintaining other versions and replacing the same (current) version
A example .htaccess file that takes care of finding the correct version and the latest version. Currently this file has to be edited for each new version (unfortunately gh-pages does not allow symlinks). It's meant to be used at some perma-id provider e.g. at w3id.org.
- The github release tool is not yet part of the deploy action. This might be desirable in the future.
- A way for automatedly delivering the latest version without changing the .htaccess-file would be nice. One could simply store the versions folder in gh-pages twice (also using the name "latest").
| Requirement | Description | Prefered property | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Title | Title of the ontology | dcterms:title |
|
| Author, Creator, Maintainer | Identification of the creator(s) or maintainer(s) of the ontology. Wherever possible use an ORCID | dcterms:creator |
<https://orcid.org/0000-0000-0000-0000> |
| Creation Date | Date of creation of the ontology | dcterms:created |
|
| Version | Details about the version of the ontology, including updates and revisions. | owl:versionInfo and owl:versionIRI |
|
| Ontology Description and Scope | Clear and concise decription of the onotlogy and its scope. | rdfs:comment |
|
| Project | Identification of the projects creator(s) or maintainer(s) of the ontology. Include this in the rdfs:comment for "Ontology description and scope" | ||
| License | Information about the licensing and usage rights of the ontology. If you have not thought about this before, we recommend to consider CC-BY-4.0 | dcterms:license |
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/> |
| How to cite | Provide a citation example for the ontology, e.g. a scientific paper you published about your ontology. | dcterms:bibliographicCitation |
| Requirement | Description | Prefered property | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Namespace | A unique namespace for the ontology to avoid conflicts and ensure clear identification. | https://w3id.org/pmd/new_ontology/ | |
| Dereferenceable IRIs | Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs) should be dereferenciable for easy access and reference, if you have the capabilities to do so. |
| Requirement | Description | Prefered property | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Labels | Label of the classes and properties | rdfs:label or skos:prefLabel |
|
| Definitions | Clear and concise definitions for all terms, concepts, and relationships within the ontology. | rdfs:comment or skos:description |
| Requirement | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Documentation | Comprehensive documentation covering the ontology's purpose, scope, and structure. | |
| Accessibility | Accessable through www, publicly available | https://github.com/materialdigital/ontology_publication_template |
| Findability | Already published via scientific journal or terminology service or ontology repo or similar |
| Requirement | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Top-Level grounding | To which top-level or mid-level is the ontology based on? | BFO, EMMO, PMDco, etc |
| Concept reuse | From which other ontologies are concepts reused? | QUDT, CHEBI, etc. |
| Format Standards | Serialize the ontology in RDF turtle. | ttl |
| OWL Complexity | Is the ontology OWL-DL conform or does it use other OWL variants |