NFDIcore 2.0: A BFO-Compliant Ontology for Multi-Domain Research Infrastructures
This provides a standardized ontology for multi-domain research infrastructures in Germany, facilitating cross-domain research, but it is incremental as it builds on existing BFO frameworks.
The paper tackles the problem of representing diverse research communities in Germany's National Research Data Infrastructure by developing NFDIcore 2.0, a BFO-compliant ontology that ensures interoperability across disciplines through modular design and SWRL rules, validated with use cases.
This paper presents NFDIcore 2.0, an ontology compliant with the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) designed to represent the diverse research communities of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) in Germany. NFDIcore ensures the interoperability across various research disciplines, thereby facilitating cross-domain research. Each domain's individual requirements are addressed through specific ontology modules. This paper discusses lessons learned during the ontology development and mapping process, supported by practical validation through use cases in diverse research domains. The originality of NFDIcore lies in its adherence to BFO, the use of SWRL rules for efficient knowledge discovery, and its modular, extensible design tailored to meet the needs of heterogeneous research domains.