An Ontology of Scientific Experiments
Ross King
(University of Wales)
The formal description of experiments for efficient analysis,
annotation, and sharing of results is a fundamental objective of
science. Ontologies, the explicit specification of the concepts in a
subject, are required to achieve this goal. A few subject-specific
ontologies of experiments currently exist. However, despite the unity
of science, there is no general ontology of scientific experiments. We
propose the ontology EXPO to meet this need. EXPO links the general
upper ontology SUMO with subject-specific ontologies of experiments by
formalising the generic concepts of experimental design, methodology,
and results representation. The structure of EXPO follows international
standards and formats: with its concepts organised in a (is-a)
hierarchy, along with their relations and definitions. EXPO is
expressed in the W3C standard ontology language OWL. We demonstrate the
utility of EXPO by applying it to two experiments: one in high-energy
physics, and the other in molecular biology. The use of EXPO made the
goals and structure of these experiments more explicit, revealed
ambiguities, and highlighted similarities. We argue that the use of
ontologies to annotate scientific experiments will have profound effects
on scientific publications. We conclude that EXPO is of general value
in describing experiments and a step towards the formalisation of
science.