Analyzing the Evolution of Life Science Ontologies and Mappings

Abstract. Ontologies are heavily developed and used in life sciences and undergo continuous changes. However, the evolution of life science ontologies and references to them (e.g., annotations) is not well understood and has received little attention so far. We therefore propose a generic framework for analyzing both the evolution of ontologies and the evolution of ontology-related mappings, in particular annotations referring to ontologies and similarity (match) mappings between ontologies. We use our framework for an extensive comparative evaluation of evolution measures for 16 life science ontologies. Moreover, we analyze the evolution of annotation mappings and ontology mappings for the Gene Ontology.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: DILS
• Authors: Michael Hartung, Toralf Kirsten, Erhard Rahm
• Keywords: Life Sciences, DILS 2008, Life Science, Life Science Ontologies, Mappings