Biodiversity Information Science and Standards :
Conference Abstract
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Corresponding author: Matt Woodburn (m.woodburn@nhm.ac.uk)
Received: 20 Sep 2023 | Published: 21 Sep 2023
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC0 Public Domain Dedication.
Citation:
Woodburn M, Buschbom J, Grant S, Jones J, Norton B, Trekels M, Vincent S, Webbink K (2023) No Pain No Gain: Standards mapping in Latimer Core development. Biodiversity Information Science and Standards 7: e113053. https://doi.org/10.3897/biss.7.113053
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Latimer Core (LtC) is a new proposed Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) data standard that supports the representation and discovery of natural science collections by structuring data about the groups of objects that those collections and their subcomponents encompass (
As a standard that is (in this first version) focused on natural science collections, LtC has significant intersections with existing data standards and models (Fig.
During LtC development, efforts were made to identify and align with relevant standards and vocabularies, and adopt existing terms from them where possible. During expert review, a more structured approach was proposed and implemented using the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) mappingRelation vocabulary. This exercise helped to better describe the nature of the mappings between new LtC terms and related terms in other standards, and to validate decisions around the borrowing of existing terms for LtC. A further exercise also used elements of the Simple Standard for Sharing Ontological Mappings (SSSOM) to start to develop a more comprehensive set of metadata around these mappings. At present, these mappings (Suppl. material
Even with the support provided by the SKOS and SSSOM standards, the LtC experience has proven the mapping process to be far from straightforward. Different standards vary in how they are structured, for example, DwC is a ‘bag of terms’, with informal classes and no structural constraints, while more structured standards and ontologies like ABCD and PROV employ different approaches to how structure is defined and documented. The various standards use different metadata schemas and serialisations (e.g., Resource Description Framework (RDF), XML) for their documentation, and different approaches to providing persistent, resolvable identifiers for their terms. There are also many subtle nuances involved in assessing the alignment between the concepts that the source and target terms represent, particularly when assessing whether a match is exact enough to allow the existing term to be adopted. These factors make the mapping process quite manual and labour-intensive. Approaches and tools, such as developing decision trees (Fig.
A provisional decision tree created to structure and streamline the process of defining mappings between LtC and other standards.
In this presentation, we will discuss the LtC experience of the standard mapping process, the challenges faced and methods used, and the potential to contribute this experience to a collaborative standards mapping within the anticipated TDWG Standards Mapping Interest Group.
collection descriptions, SKOS, SSSOM
Matt Woodburn
TDWG 2023
Provisional SKOS mappings between LtC terms and related terms in other standards.
Provisional extended mappings using elements of the SSSOM schema.