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Scientific Questions Ontology

The DISK Scientific Questions Ontology provides a vocabulary to create semantic representations for scientific hypothesis or questions.

The ontology defines the Question class, with the following properties:

  • hasQuestionTemplate: A brief text statement of the question. Includes Question Variables that will be replaced with domain concepts to create specific questions.

  • hasQuestionPattern: SPARQL like semantic representation of this Question, placing Question Variables within the Question Template.

  • hasQuestionVariable: list of QuestionVariable for this Question template. These appear as SPARQL variables on the Question Pattern.

The QuestionVariable class has the following properties:

  • hasVariableName: SPARQL name of this variable. It is used on the Question Pattern.

  • hasConstraints: SPARQL query that will determine any restrictions for this variable.

  • hasFixedOptions: list of possible values for this variable. This is an alternative to specifying hasConstraints.

Since each question corresponds to a portion of a SPARQL query, multiple questions can be composed to create more complex ones.