Adding Terms to VIBSO
Following best practices in ontology development, we are reusing already existing terms from external ontologies whenever possible. This means that before requesting a new term in VIBSO, contributors are expected to research whether the term in question does not already exist in a compatible external ontology using a look-up portal, such as the NFDI4Chem Terminology Service or EBI's OLS.
Chris Mungall wrote a really helpful blog post on "How to select and request terms from ontologies". The gist of it is represented in the below graphic taken from this blog post:
Importing terms
Whenever you identify a term missing in VIBSO and you have found a suitable candidate within an existing ontology, please feel free to open a new blank issue with a short but precise title (e.g. import OBI:microscope) and an explanation why you think this term should be imported into VIBSO with regard to its scope. We can thus discuss in the comment section of the issue, whether this term really is a good fit to be imported or why it might not be.
Once it is decided to be needed, a pull request (PR) can be made to include it in the imports. For this it needs either be added in one of the existing text files where such term imports get declared (see /src/ontology/imports) and from which the OWL import modules are build automatically, according to the standard import workflow documented in here. If the term is from an ontology that is not yet being used as an import module in VIBSO the managing imports workflow needs to be triggered.
New Term Requests
When you've identified a term that is needed within the scope of VIBSO and which is not yet defined in an existing compatible ontology, a new term request (NTR) should be filed in VIBSO's issue tracker. This issue should then be used to engage the community in discussing the label, definition, position in the hierarchy as well as possible axiomatization. Once the discussion has reached a consensus, someone from the VIBSO team or maybe you, will have to make a PR in which the discussed changes to VIBSO will be implemented and can be reviewed.
Please check the open NTR issues to make sure none exists for this term already. If it does, feel free to participate in the discussion. Else, please use this issue template to file your NTR.
Adding New Terms to the TSV Template
Once a NTR is ready to be implemented in a PR, all you need to do is editing the vibso_terms.tsv template. For an explanation of the TSV columns, go here.
Ontology editing: principles and best practices
For more information on best practices in ontology editing, here are some really good links: