Collaborative ontology development from Natasha Noy (sssw2012)

Stanford, Protégé.

In past 10-15 years, through collaboration with scientists (particularly biomed), ontologies have become essential.

Don't need to sell ontologies to scientists, they believe in it.

Focus on science because that's where she has experience etc.

We're not so bad at versioning ontologies, more versioning data is the problem.

Experts add stuff, curator checks quality, and publishes upcoming tasks.

Similar to open source developments, but no research to compare the two.
- Different because biomed people are paid (well).

ICD - International Classification of Diseases.

• Started 17th century.
• Causes of death, medical bills, policy making.
• Revised in 80s over 8 annual conferences.
• 17-58 countries, 1-5 person delegations, mainly health statisticians.
• Manual, on paper.
• Whoever shouted loudest..
• Paper copies, only English, pdf.
• ICD-11 - OWL ontology!
• Open, Protégé (a customised, Web version), links to others.

Conflict resolution:

• People naturally don't step on each others' toes.
• Users expect stuff like Web 2.0 interactions, Web interface.

Web Protégé:

• No consistency checking - coming but currently must go offline.
• Ontologies are solution to everything - versioning, roles, social interactions.
• Also plugins are the solutions to everything - visualisations.