Core Concepts
NFDIcore 2.0 is a BFO-compliant ontology that enables interoperability across heterogeneous research domains within the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) in Germany, facilitating cross-domain research and knowledge discovery.
Abstract
The paper presents NFDIcore 2.0, an ontology designed to represent the diverse research communities of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) in Germany. NFDIcore ensures interoperability across various research disciplines by adopting a modular approach, where domain-specific requirements are addressed through ontology extensions.
The development of NFDIcore 2.0 was guided by a user-centered design approach, incorporating feedback and requirements from multiple NFDI consortia, including NFDI4Culture, NFDI-MatWerk, NFDI4DataScience, and NFDI4Memory. The ontology leverages the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) as its top-level ontology, ensuring a universal and foundational representation of core concepts. It also integrates established standards and external ontologies, such as schema.org and DCAT, to facilitate smooth data integration and exchange across domains.
NFDIcore 2.0 introduces several key features:
- Representation of independent continuants, including agents, collections, and places, and their context-specific roles.
- Modeling of research artifacts, such as datasets, data portals, and services, as information content entities with detailed relationships.
- Incorporation of planned processes, events, and complex relationships to capture the multifaceted nature of research activities.
- Provision of SWRL rule-based shortcuts to enable both detailed and simplified representations, enhancing usability and integration.
- Modular design that allows for domain-specific extensions, addressing the unique requirements of individual research communities.
The evaluation of NFDIcore 2.0 across multiple NFDI consortia has demonstrated its effectiveness in representing and integrating heterogeneous research domains, while also highlighting areas for future development and enhancement.
Stats
"Knowledge Graph supported research data infrastructures are currently being developed in domain specific, national, and international efforts to facilitate advanced data discovery, scientific collaboration, and innovation."
"The NFDI consortia share similar overarching goals and concepts, including their structure, governance, persons, institutions, areas of expertise, data repositories, devices, services, and more."
"Ensuring the interoperability of the research (meta) data among these NFDI consortia has significant benefits and allows for knowledge discovery across research domains."
Quotes
"To achieve a high level of interoperability, and hence to be able to answer these questions, a data model is needed that represents the overarching concepts of the domains on the one hand and meets the specific requirements of the individual communities on the other."
"The originality of the presented approach lies in its combination of compliance with the well-established BFO as an upper ontology, the introduction of short-cuts by means of SWRL rules, and a modular and extensible design tailored to various research domains."