Content & context: 5. Harmonise content elements

This step establishes which controlled vocabularies, terminologies and ontologies will be used to describe the research object and its associated metadata, and applies their terms in ways that support consistent interpretation and reuse.

Semantic resources provide agreed identifiers, labels, definitions and relationships for concepts. They can make the meaning of research object content and metadata clearer to people and machines and help different research objects, services and communities refer consistently to the same concepts. A controlled vocabulary may define a permitted list of values, while an ontology may also provide formal relationships and constraints. The FAIRification activity should select the level of semantic detail needed for its intended uses. Use this step during project examination to identify semantic requirements, inventory current vocabulary use, assess available capabilities and select candidate resources. During an implementation cycle, use it to extend or develop semantic resources where necessary, apply annotations and establish the required management arrangements.

Vocabulary discovery and selection

Find, assess and choose semantic resources that provide appropriate identifiers and descriptions for the concepts represented in the research object and its associated metadata.

This capability includes determining which concepts need controlled terms, identifying relevant community resources and evaluating whether those resources provide sufficient coverage, granularity, semantic precision and operational support.

The capability may be provided through project expertise, domain communities, vocabulary registries, lookup services, ontology portals, standards organisations, repositories or other FAIR-enabling resources.

Resources

Vocabulary extension and development

Add or develop new concepts when established semantic resources do not adequately cover the requirements of the FAIRification activity.

This capability may involve requesting a new term from an existing authority, contributing corrections or relationships, creating a governed local extension, defining an application ontology or developing a new semantic resource.

The preferred sequence is to:

1. Reuse a suitable existing term.
2. Request a new term, definition or correction from the maintaining authority.
3. Use an established extension mechanism.
4. Create a governed local extension that reuses existing identifiers where possible.
5. Combine or extract modules from compatible semantic resources.
6. Develop a new vocabulary or ontology only where no suitable alternative exists.

Vocabulary development usually requires coordination with domain communities, intended users, ontology or terminology specialists, repositories and software implementers. The required capability may therefore be provided outside the immediate FAIRification team.

Resources

Semantic annotation

Associate research objects, components, metadata elements and values with identifiable concepts from selected semantic resources.

This capability includes selecting the correct concept, representing its identifier in the appropriate context and recording sufficient provenance to understand how and why the annotation was made.

In addition to a term from a vocabulary, an annotation usually also includes the subject being described and the relationship between the subject and the concept that the term represents. For example, stating that a research object “is about” a disease, “uses” a method or “has specimen type” a biological material expresses different meanings.

The capability may be provided through manual curation, data-entry systems, transformation workflows, text-mining or annotation tools, repository services or combinations of automated and expert processes.

Resources

Vocabulary management

Maintain reliable and reproducible use of semantic resources over time.

For most FAIRification activities, this means managing the project’s use of externally maintained vocabularies: recording versions, monitoring changes, updating annotations and preserving reproducibility.

Where the project or community maintains a vocabulary, ontology, value set or extension, the capability additionally includes editorial governance, identifiers, releases, publication, support and long-term maintenance.

Resources