VIVO-Conference_2018_VoCol_public.pdf (1.01 MB)
VIVO-DE: Collaborative ontology editing & management with VoCol
Version 2 2018-07-16, 14:38
Version 1 2018-07-16, 11:16
presentation
posted on 2018-07-16, 14:38 authored by Christian HauschkeChristian Hauschke, Anna Kasprzik, Tatiana WaltherTatiana WaltherIt is not sufficient to translate the labels of the VIVO-ISF ontology to
adopt VIVO to the needs of German research institutions. There is a
need for an ontology extension that is tailored to the specifics of the
German academic landscape, especially with regard to language and
(academic) culture. In order to involve as many stakeholders as
possible, a collaborative approach to ontology management is needed.
Basing the corresponding workflows solely on Git is an option, which is
currently chosen by the German VIVO community (VIVO-DE). However, there
is a demand for more user-friendly ways to work together. There is a
small number of tools which are specifically developed for collaborative
ontological work. One of them is VoCol. In this poster we would like to
describe possible use cases for VoCol in the VIVO-DE context,
challenges we anticipate, and our suggestions how to face them in the
future. VoCol has been originally developed at Fraunhofer Institute IAIS
in Bonn and from 2018 on will be evolved in collaboration by Fraunhofer
IAIS and the Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB) – German National
Library of Science and Technology in Hannover. It is based on Open
Source software such as Java libraries and the Jena Fuseki SPARQL
server, and requires nothing from the user but a standard Git-based
repository. The application serves as a frontend in order to facilitate
collaborative ontology development. It supports the Semantic Web
standards OWL and SKOS, and features various functionalities such as a
Turtle editor, a syntax validation routine, options for an automated
documentation, tools for ontology visualization, evolution reports,
content negotiation, and a SPARQL endpoint. VoCol is currently being
tested at the TIB and by other VIVO-DE community members with the goal
to assess its suitability for collaborative editing and management of
the KDSF-VIVO-Alignment and VIVO-DE-Extension vocabularies. Despite the
aforementioned benefits of VoCol, there is still room for improvement,
for example regarding performance and a more intuitive user guidance.
Moreover, VoCol could be taken to the next level by adding more
functionalities such as more sophisticated structural validation and
verification routines, and alignment tools that allow to establish
mappings between several vocabularies.