Request for proposals to draft a GBIF position paper on enabling a shared infrastructure for the development, maintenance and governance of vocabularies and ontologies for biodiversity informatics

Introduction

Vocabularies and ontologies are types of Knowledge Organisation System (KOS) that range from simple glossaries and dictionaries through classification schemes, taxonomies, thesauri and ontologies. As such, they are an essential foundation for data interoperability within the biodiversity informatics domain. The focus of this call is on identifying key activities that will enable GBIF and related communities of practice to move forward with such vocabularies (the term “vocabularies” is used here in a generic sense to represent the various types of KOS). Drawing on the needs of the relevant communities, the position paper will provide recommendations and an action plan on how to engage all players in creating a global infrastructure for the development, maintenance and governance of such vocabularies. A discussion paper that sets the context for this call is available at: http://imsgbif.gbif.org/CMS/DMS_.php?ID=1057

Scope

The discussion paper should be broad in scope and cover the following aspects:

Review: a review of the current state of vocabularies and ontologies and supporting frameworks of relevance to biodiversity informatics.

Constraints/Barriers: identification of the technical and social barriers (e.g., infrastructure, capacity, training, finances) to development, uptake and maintenance of vocabularies.

Gap Analysis: identification of gaps in current practices, tools, standards, processes, etc. that hinder the establishment of a rich unified vocabularies framework for biodiversity informatics.

Guidelines: provide a set recommendations on:

• developing an informatics infrastructure - the best system/combination of systems for managing the development, publishing and maintenance of vocabularies, considering, among others, such existing systems as i) the TDWG ontologies site, ii) the Google Docs/TDWG wiki system used for Darwin Core, iii) the OBO Foundry system, iv) the ISOcat system, v) the GBIF vocabularies site, and vi) Collaborative Protégé;
• enabling a governance framework that reflects community ownership and buy-in;
• structuring cross domain (e.g., species, genomic, ecosystem levels) interactions in support of common needs for vocabularies;
• developing, publishing and maintaining multi-lingual vocabularies;
• modelling, and platforms for modelling: in particular, addressing development and maintenance of flat vocabularies (concepts and their definitions) as an independent activity from modelling relationships between concepts;
• providing persistent identifiers for both a vocabulary and its constituent terms;
• a metadata schema for describing biodiversity related vocabularies in order to aid discovery and re-use;
• educating the community in development and use of vocabularies.

Timeline

Submission of Proposals: 14 July 2010
Signing of Contract: 21 July 2010
Initial draft of position paper: 23 September 2010
Community consultations completed: 23 October 2010
Release of position paper: 15 November 2010

Authoring Process

Author(s) are encouraged to also seek inputs from other experts and/or user groups. If necessary, the GBIF Secretariat can provide the mechanism to coordinate the process of seeking input through our community portal and mailing lists, etc. The author(s) are expected to circulate the draft discussion document to the key stakeholder communities, potential publishers and users of biodiversity data in order to receive feedback/comments.

The GBIF Secretariat can facilitate a workshop involving experts to aid in developing the document.

Relevant comments/suggestions by the stakeholder communities need to be addressed and/or incorporated in the final version of the position paper.

Support

GBIF will provide a grant of €5,000 to the author/s for drafting of the position paper as outlined above.

Request for Proposals

The GBIF Secretariat invites concise proposals from individuals and/or research groups to develop this paper. Proposals should include:

• a proposed Table of Contents for the position paper;
• brief CVs of individuals and/or research group members undertaking the task

Proposals should be sent to Dr Éamonn Ó Tuama, Senior Programme Officer, Inventory, Discovery, Access by 14 July 2010 (email: eotuama_@If you can read this, please upgrade to a modern browser..gbif.org).