Abstract
The Semantic Network, a component of the Unified Medical Language System® (UMLS), describes core biomedical knowledge consisting of semantic types and relationships. It is a well established, semi-formal ontology in widespread use for over a decade. We expected to “publish” this ontology on the Semantic Web, using OWL, with relatively little effort. However, we ran into a number of problems concerning alternative interpretations of the SN notation and the inability to express some of the interpretations in OWL. We detail these problems, as a cautionary tale to others planning to publish pre-existing ontologies on the Semantic Web, as a list of issues to consider when describing formally concepts in any ontology, and as a collection of criteria for evaluating alternative representations, which could form part of a methodology of ontology development.
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Kashyap, V., Borgida, A. (2003). Representing the UMLS® Semantic Network Using OWL. In: Fensel, D., Sycara, K., Mylopoulos, J. (eds) The Semantic Web - ISWC 2003. ISWC 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2870. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-39718-2_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-39718-2_1
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