D4.3 - Initial NanoCommons Ontology

This deliverable describes the outcomes of the first 18 months of work on the NanoCommons Ontology, which builds on and expands the FP7-funded eNanoMapper ontology. With significantly fewer resources dedicated to ontologies than the eNanoMapper project had, the NanoCommons project has taken over the continued development of the eNanoMapper ontology, and the managed release of updated versions at regular intervals. NanoCommons has made two major releases of the ontology in a period of 18 months, based on needs from other NanoSafety Cluster projects and efforts, like Nanoreg2, Gracious, ACENano, the USA NIKC project, and the Malta Initiative.
This deliverable introduces the history of the eNanoMapper ontology, how the NanoCommons project has taken over release management, the recent updates to the development of the ontology and updates to the content of the ontology. It also describes our efforts for continued dissemination of the ontology to support others in utilisation of the ontology to support interlinking of datasets from different projects and sources and the collaboration with other projects with specific ontology work packages or tasks to guarantee a harmonized approach. Significant work went into maintenance of the ontology, requiring updates in third-party ontologies, updating the hosting of the ontology, and exploration of current needs from other European, American and international projects, and the integration of an ontology mapping tool for integration of datasets into the NanoCommons Knowledgebase. This deliverable also summarizes new dissemination and networking activities, consisting of both physical meetings and online tutorials, and an outlook of the upcoming work resulting from gaps identified in the reported initial ontology, which includes the need to add definitions to many of the terms, and to adjust the organisation of some of the terms based on user feedback.