OCS

[edithlaszny]

Title

A Foundational Ontology for Computational Sociology

Short Description

701 classes covering general sociology, 254 object properties, 78 data properties, and 201 n-ary causal relations - all properly mapped under BFO 2020 toplevel ontology classes.

Description

Ontologies have been created in a wide range of subject areas and their number and application areas are dramatically growing. However, it can be considered quite well-founded to assume that no ontology has been created in the general sociological subject area so far. The Ontology for Computational Sociology makes a modest attempt at this, hoping that experts in the subject area will find the topic itself interesting.

Classes are fully mapped under BF0 2020.

Intended use: OCS formalises sociological concepts and their relationships to support computational social science research. It enables systematic knowledge representation, automated reasoning about social phenomena, integration of sociological theories, and semantic interoperability with other domain ontologies. The ontology serves research, education, and cross-disciplinary social data analysis.

Identifier Space

OCS

License

CC-BY 4.0

Domain

investigations

Source Code Repository

https://github.com/edithlaszny/OCS/

Homepage

https://github.com/edithlaszny/OCS/

Issue Tracker

https://github.com/edithlaszny/OCS/

Contribution Guidelines

https://github.com/edithlaszny/OCS/

Ontology Download Link

https://github.com/edithlaszny/OCS/blob/main/OCS.rdf

Contact Name

Dr Edit Hlaszny

Contact Email

edithlaszny@gmail.com

Contact GitHub Username

edithlaszny

Contact ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0009-0005-6549-9839

Formats

• OWL RDF/XML (.owl)
• OBO (.obo)
• OBO Graph JSON (.json)

Dependencies

bfo

Related

http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/bfo/2020/bfo.owl

Usages

- user: https://www.hlaszny.com/OCS/
  description: ontology, documentation and ontology browser for OCS (computational sociology research)
  examples:
    - url: https://hlaszny.com/OCS/data/OCS.html
      description: "Interactive HTML browser for exploring sociological concepts, relationships, and causal patterns"
    - url: https://hlaszny.com/OCS/data/OCS.rdf
      description: "OWL ontology file for computational sociology research and semantic integration"
    - url: https://hlaszny.com/OCS/EclipseOCSws/paper/OCS.pdf
      description: "OCS detailed description"

Intended Use Cases and/or Related Projects

https://hlaszny.com/OCS/EclipseOCSws/paper/OCS.pdf

Data Sources

References
[1] Allemang, D., & Hendler, J.A. (2012). Semantic Web
for the Working Ontologist: Effective Modeling in RDFS
and OWL. Morgan Kaufmann.
[2] Arp, R., Smith, B., & Spear, A.D. (2015). Building
Ontologies with Basic Formal Ontology. MIT Press.
[3] Baader, F., Horrocks, I., Lutz, C., & Sattler, U. (2017).
An Introduction to Description Logic. Cambridge University Press.
[4] Boudon, R., & Bourricaud, F. (1989). A Critical Dictionary of Sociology. Routledge.
[5] Calhoun, C., Gerteis, J., Moody, J., Pfaff, S., & Virk,
I. (2022). Contemporary Sociological Theory (4th ed.).
Wiley-Blackwell.
[6] Giddens, A. (2009). Sociology (6th ed.). Polity Press,
Cambridge UK.
[7] Horridge, M. (2011). A Practical Guide to Building
OWL Ontologies Using Protégé 4 and CO-ODE Tools.
The University of Manchester.
[8] Mueller, G.H. (1989). Sociology and Ontology: The
Analytical Foundations of Sociological Theory. University Press of America.
[9] Turner, B.S. (Ed.). (2006). The Cambridge Dictionary
of Sociology. Cambridge University Press.
[10] Turner, J.H. (2013). Theoretical Sociology: 1830 to
the Present. SAGE Publications.
[11] W3C. (n.d.). OWL Semantic Web Standards.
Retrieved from https://www.w3.org/OWL/

Additional comments or remarks

OCS is built on BFO 2020 (ISO/IEC 21838-2) and provides comprehensive coverage of general sociology with 701 classes, 254 object properties, 78 data properties, and 201 n-ary causal relationships. The ontology (https://github.com/edithlaszny/OCS/blob/main/OCS.rdf) includes a complete development toolkit (Java-based OWL preprocessor, database management scripts, HTML browser generator) enabling domain experts to extend the system without deep technical knowledge. Full source code, documentation, and an interactive web browser are publicly available at https://github.com/edithlaszny/OCS/ and at https://www.hlaszny.com/CSO/.

The system has been designed with interoperability in mind, facilitating integration with other domain ontologies in public health, economics, political science, and related fields. Community feedback and collaborative development are welcome.

OBO Foundry Pre-registration Checklist

• I have read and understood the registration process instructions and the registration checklist.
• There is no other ontology in the OBO Foundry which would be an appropriate place for my terms. If there were, I have contacted the editors, and we decided in mutual agreement that a separate ontology is more appropriate.
• My ontology has a specific release file with a version IRI and a dc:license annotation, serialised in RDF/XML.
• My identifiers (classes and properties IRIs) are formatted according to the OBO Foundry Identifier Policy
• My term labels are in English and conform to the OBO Foundry Naming Conventions
• I understand that term definitions are key to understanding the intentions of a term, especially when the ontology is used in curation. I made sure that a reasonable majority of terms in my ontology--and all top level terms--have definitions, in English, using the IAO:0000115 property.
• For every term in my ontology, I checked whether another OBO Foundry ontology has one with the same meaning. If so, I re-used that term directly (not by cross-reference, by directly using the IRI).
• For all relationship properties (Object and Data Property), I checked whether the Relation Ontology (RO) includes an appropriate one. I understand that aligning with RO is an essential part of the overall alignment between OBO ontologies!
• For the selection of appropriate annotation properties, I looked at OMO first. I understand that aligning ontology metadata and term-level metadata is essential for cross-integration of OBO ontologies.
• If I was not sure about the meaning of any of the checkboxes above, I have consulted with a member of the OBO Foundry for advice, e.g., through the obo-discuss Google Group.
• The requested ID space does not conflict with another ID space found in other registries such as the Bioregistry and BioPortal, see here for a complete list.

[edithlaszny]

OCS is built on BFO 2020 (ISO/IEC 21838-2) and provides comprehensive coverage of general sociology with:

• 701 classes
• 254 object properties
• 78 data properties
• 201 n-ary causal relationships

The ontology includes a complete development toolkit (Java-based OWL preprocessor, database management scripts, HTML browser generator) enabling domain experts to extend the system without deep technical knowledge.

Full source code, documentation, and an interactive web browser are publicly available at https://www.hlaszny.com/SO/

The system has been designed with interoperability in mind, facilitating integration with other domain ontologies in public health, economics, political science, and related fields.

Community feedback and collaborative development are welcome.

[matentzn]

I took a quick look (this is not the correct process - you will hear from OBO Foundry New Ontology Stewards soon - but there are a few immediate issues with this ontology:

1. It does not relate to OBO in any way. There is no single axiom connecting the ontology to anything in the OBO world (excluding BFO). OBO ontologies are heavily interconnected - and that is what we want to see. When you describe a concept like deforestation, for example, we would have expected you to build on ENVO (http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/ENVO_02500012).
2. Your ontology metadata schema is not in anyway aligned with OBO metadata, i.e. IAO:0000115 for definitions, NO labels, using readable instead of opage IRIs (like http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/ENVO_02500012). In fact there is literally no other metadata in the ontology other that skos:definition.
3. The domain "sociology" does not really fit into "Open Biological and Biomedical" (OBO) domain(!?)

These are all the primary reasons I think why OCS does not fit into OBO; even if we discard this, with our "ontology head on", there are a few modelling issues:

1. Incomplete alignment with BFO (this is the least relevant for me, but I know for fact that most other reviewers will wonder how "sociology" concept ended up as a sibling to occurrent and continuant)
2. You use few direct alignment axiom with BFO (i.e. subclassOf site). Mostly universal restrictions. This means that the ontological commitment for most of your classes is hidden.
3. Overall, your hierarchy reads like a SKOS taxonomy, not an OWL ontology - category terms such as Sociological_Analytical_Domains_And_Constructs rather then "concepts" (ok, the boundary is fuzzy, but just by naming it as plural you already give the impression of a category/list rather than a class)

This is not exhaustive, just food for thought for the official reviewer assigned to this.

[pfabry]

Dear @edithlaszny,

Thank you for your submission. The review will be executed as a two stage process:

First, you will have to pass OBO NOR Dashboard. Pass means that no check apart from Users and Versioning may be red. In addition, a new check is currently implemented: it consists in a lexical match of your original terms with those already existing in OBO Foundry published ontologies. The goal is to prevent the duplication of terms with similar meanings (cf. Review SOP). A list of terms that are potential duplicates will be provided soon.

After you have successfully passed the Dashboard you will be assigned an OBO Operations committee member to review the ontology. The assigned reviewer is to be considered the final arbiter of requirements; look to that reviewer's guidance regarding which suggestions made by other reviewers must be done, which suggestions are simply good to do but not required, and which should not be done.

However, as @matentzn pointed out, your ontology in its current state does not meet the dashboard criteria. I recommend reviewing the principles listed here, particularly principles 3, 5, 6, 7, and 12.

[pfabry]

@edithlaszny

your ontology has been added to the OBO NOR dashboard. Several issues need to be addressed for it to pass the dashboard checks. Please review the report and the previous comment for more details.

[edithlaszny]

Dear @pfabry ,
thank you for your partial evaluation. I am working on it continuously. I'll ready with it in two weeks as I estimate.