Feature Requests

This page contains Current Feature Requests for the Biositemaps and the Biomedical Resource Ontology (BRO)

Top page of the Biositemaps and Biomedical Resource Ontology (BRO) working group

Top page of NCBC Working Groups web site

Official site of the Biositemaps Project

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• Priority 1: Correct spelling of Researh (to Research) in the basic Biositemaps Search http://biositemaps.ncbcs.org/biositemaps/search/advanced?conf= and http://biositemaps.ncbcs.org/biositemaps/search/advanced?conf=ctsa
• Priority 2: Establish best practises for search engines (e.g., the current Biositemaps and the v3 CTSA), e.g., if you do basic search on XYZ then should it do a 'grep' over all entries in the biositemaps corpus, etc. etc.
• Priority 1: Continue harmonization and alignment between the Biomedical Resource Ontology (http://bioportal.bioontology.org/visualize/39977) and the Neuroscience Information Framework (NIF) Resource Type Hierarchy (http://neurolex.org/wiki/Resource_Type_Hierarchy). Currently the top level of BRO borrowed heavily from the top levels of the NIFRTH. The immediate goal is to finish the full complement of BRO class definitions. The definitions of classes in Activity and Area_of_Research have been mostly completed by the NCBC-CTSA Technical Tiger Team (TTT), but the remainder of definitions of classa names in Resource type need to be completed (some have been borrowed from NIF). In the future all class defintions need continued alignemnt with NIFRTH. We need to investigate technologies to improve the continuous, semi-automatic alignment between BRO, NIF, and other related resource ontologies. (Suggested by PLyster 20090607)
• Priority 1: Develop, test, and install capability of synonyms for class names in BRO/Bioportal. This is a basic feature of ontological development, and is also related to the issues of provenance tracking and depracation (the latter of which is currently to be handled by assigning 'old' class names (and possibly synonyms) to a depracation bin. By formally allowing synonyms the BRO/Bioportal will be able to handle misspellings (in applications), resolution of collisions between different sides in a harmonization process, and just the usual need for multiple words to have the same meaning. This will also help in the process of alinging the lexicon with NIF. Aside from helping harmonization etc, this will also preserve the hierarchy in case of real synonyms. (Suggested by PLyster 20090218)
• Priority 1: Flexible extension to BIM (Information Model) in case an individual wants to create customized biositemaps, e.g., to display as web site. This will also help to make the Biositemaps less lossy. (Suggested by PLyster 20090218)
• Priority 2: Add tool tip for the three class hierarchies in order to identify BRO/Deprecated/not-BRO (Peter and Csongor 20090526)
• Priority 1: Maintain content of editors: e.g., Update names Center or Organization (Peter and Csongor 20090526)
• Priority 2: Extensible (plug-and-play) use of Hierarchies (BRO, NIF, etc) (Peter and Csongor 20090526)
• Priority 1: Add in Related Resources tools back to editor. This will help generate patterns of associations between tools and users. (Peter and Csongor 20090526)
• Priority 2: Tools to automatically generate Biositemaps (Peter and Csongor 20090526)
• Priority 2: Process for handling provenance which is lossless. Meaning: will enable users/consumers to know which epochs (lexicon and hierarchy) of BRO is applicable to a biositemaps.rdf. (Suggested by PLyster 20090218)
• Priority 2: Extend Biositemaps API to support use of Biositemaps as exchange mechanism for information about resources (Suggested by PLyster 20080218)