A model for ontology quality evaluation

Ontologies are important knowledge representation and sharing tools in the workflow of biology research. The high cost of creating and maintaining ontologies encourages their sharing and reuse, and an increasing number of ontologies have been made available from different sources, with different models of curation. To enable effective selection, reuse, integration, and maintenance of these ontologies, however, one needs to have a systematic method of evaluating and connecting their quality to the context of an intended use. Based on an analysis of the activity system and Web server logs of the morphbank biodiversity research data repository, a model was developed to evaluate ontology quality. The model connects the types of quality problems with the types of research activities and suggests relevant metrics. The paper also describes the structure of some of the research activities and the types and patterns of end-user searches in morphbank.