20 February 2019
Voting Members of the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) have approved a new project to create a Standards-Specific Ontology Standard (short title: NISO SSOS). A working group is now being formed to develop and standardise an ontology to describe a limited set of core concepts and relationships focusing initially on the lifecycle of standards. This will facilitate use of standards, support more consistent discovery and navigation within them, and set a foundation for other semantic applications, such as linked data, in the standards ecosystem.
“If the hundreds of organisations who produce and distribute standards were to develop their own local ontologies, it would inhibit interoperability at a time when disparate systems most require it in order to streamline processes and enhance services or products. It hurts smaller organisations by adding to the general expense of standards publications,” said Robert Wheeler, Director of Publishing Technologies at ASME and a co-sponsor of the proposal. “The inconsistencies across vocabularies would also slow the discovery and navigation of standards documents by those who actively seek to use those materials.”
“The new working group will form a high-level ontology, creating a framework describing the core concepts and relationships that exist in standard documents that can be built upon and extended. That results in great interoperability of standards and standards data,” said Todd Carpenter, the Executive Director of NISO. “It’s important development work and the new working group will benefit from participation by industry professionals having a general familiarity with semantic publishing, XML and standards publishing.”
Those interested in participating in the working group now being formed should contact NISO Associate Director of Programs, Nettie Lagace, nlagace@niso.org. NISO is seeking participation in this working group by those familiar with standards content: standards producers, publishers, distributors, service providers, and libraries.