MSI-Icon                               Ontology WG

OWG statement of purpose

The OWG seeks to facilitate the consistent annotation of metabolomics experiments by developing an ontology to enable the broader scientific community to understand, interpret and integrate data. This will be valuable resource not only for the groups involved in the WG but also for the metabolomics-user community at large, allowing for the consistent semantic understanding of and data across disparate sources (software and databases, private and public).


Operating plan

The OWG will tackle the semantics issue by:
  • Reaching a consensus on a core set of controlled vocabularies (CVs) and
  • Developing an corresponding ontology.
    Specifically the CVs and ontology will aim to:
  • Provide a consensus set of descriptors for the consistent semantic representation of and data across disparate resources (software and databases, both private and public).
  • Assist to model the design of an investigation, the protocols and instrumentation used, the data generated and the types of analyses performed on it.
    The developmental process will require the following groups of people to provide input:
  • The OWG members as developers of the CVs and ontology;
  • Ontology experts/knowledge engineers to provide advice about the engineering of the ontology;
  • Metabolomics practitioners to provide use cases, validate the CVs and ontology produced and advise on additional terms to be included into the ontology.


  • OWG-Roadmap

    The full documentation on the scope and organization of the MSI-Ontology working group can be download here

    Join the MSI-OWG

    If you want to join the ontology WG, please write to our maillist.

    This website is maintained by Daniel Schober: schober[at]ebi.ac.uk

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