OBO Foundry

A subset of OBO that fulfils certain criteria. OBO Foundry ontologies strive to be interoperable with each other, non-redundant, and use relations from the OBO Relations Ontology

Coordinating Editors

 * Michael Ashburner (Cambridge)
 * Suzanna Lewis (Berkeley)
 * Chris Mungall (Berkeley)
 * Alan Ruttenberg (Science Commons)
 * Richard Scheuermann (University of Texas)
 * Barry Smith (Buffalo/Saarbrücken)

Introduction
The OBO Foundry is a collaborative experiment, involving a group of ontology developers who have agreed in advance to the adoption of a growing set of principles specifying best practices in ontology development. The goal is to develop a set of ontologies which can be used in combination because they are based on these common principles. A draft of the Foundry practices is under consideration by the OBO community.

OBO Foundry workshops
The 1st OBO Foundry workshop was hosted by the European Bioinformatics Institute EBI, on Monday July 7th and Tuesday 8th, 2008, to bring together the representatives of the ontologies working under the Foundry umbrella.

The second workshop is set for June 2009. Because of space constraints attendance is limited.

Principles
Version as of 24 April 2006 (current)

1. The ontology is open and available to be used by all without any constraint other than (1) its origin must be acknowledged and (2) it is not to be altered and subsequently redistributed under the original name or with the same identifiers.

'''2. The ontology is in, or can be expressed in, a common formal language. A provisional list of languages supported by OBO is provided at http://obofoundry.org/'''

3. The ontology possesses a unique identifier space within OBO.

4. The ontology provider has procedures for identifying distinct successive versions.

5. The ontology has a clearly specified and clearly delineated content.

6. The ontology includes textual definitions for all terms.

7. The ontology uses relations which are unambiguously defined following the pattern of definitions laid down in the OBO Relation Ontology.

8. The ontology is well-documented.

9. The ontology has a plurality of independent users.

'''10. The ontologies in the OBO Foundry will be developed in a collaborative effort. '''

Initial Candidate Members of the OBO Foundry

 * GO Gene Ontology
 * CL Cell Ontology
 * SO Sequence Ontology
 * ChEBI Chemical Ontology
 * PATO Phenotype Ontology
 * OBI Ontology for Biomedical Investigations
 * FMA Foundational Model of Anatomy
 * RO Relation Ontology