The Ontologies Community of Practice: A CGIAR Initiative for Big Data in Agrifood Systems

Abstract

Digital technology use in agriculture and agrifood systems research accelerates the production of multidisciplinary data, which spans genetics, environment, agroecology, biology, and socioeconomics. Quality labeling of data secures its online findability, reusability, interoperability, and reliable interpretation, through controlled vocabularies organized into meaningful and computer-readable knowledge domains called ontologies. There is currently no full set of recommended ontologies for agricultural research, so data scientists, data managers, and database developers struggle to find validated terminology. The Ontologies Community of Practice of the CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture harnesses international expertise in knowledge representation and ontology development to produce missing ontologies, identifies best practices, and guides data labeling by teams managing multidisciplinary information platforms to release the FAIR data underpinning the evidence of research impact.