Protege Extensions for Scientist-Oriented Modeling of Observation and Measurement Semantics

We present Protégé-OWL extensions designed to help scientists define domain-specific ontologies for describing observational data. The extensions provide high-level forms that users can fill out from within Protégé to specify classes used to describe scientific measurements. As a user fills out a form, underlying OWL-DL axioms are automatically asserted, thus allowing users to specify relatively complex OWL-DL constraints without requiring an understanding of the technical details of OWL. Encoded in the constraints generated by the extension are a set of “best practices” for enabling improved data discovery and integration of observational data.