The NCI EVS Project invites you to join us in developing open source tools for developing and serving terminology content and ontologic structures, techniques and tools to validate terminology content and ontology structure, and techniques and technologies for federating terminologies and ontologies.

The primary mission and descriptions of the EVS Project components are found on the EVS Project Page. Projects for which we are seeking proposals may pertain to one EVS component only or span several, may address integration of EVS tools or services with non-NCI resources, or may address issues of terminology/ontology quality assurance and/or collaborative content development.

Our expectations regarding a "unit" of contribution are described in the Unit of Contribution Section in more detail but essentially can be an extension to the EVS UML Model, an architecture or code change, a functional enhancement, documentation enhancement or a training module. Among the EVS components for which we are accepting proposals are:  

NCI Extensions to Protege/OWL and PROMPT
Software to asses the quality of terminologies developed in OWL;
Development of techniques to support open, community-based collaborative ontology development, federation of ontologies, and related software that implements those techniques;
Training techniques, tools and materials addressing any aspect of using a contemporary biomedical terminology, especially BiomedGT, NCI Thesaurus or any other terminology found on the NCI Terminology Server  ; the NCI BioPortal  , or on the NCI Metathesaurus Server 

To find out how to participate see below.

In Protege/OWL :
• Lexical search capabilities to supplement the AQP capability of Protege/OWL
• Spell checking against biomedical dictionaries and thesauri
• An algorithm for measuring the syntactical closeness of two strings. This algorithm can be used in developing advanced search, it can also be used in matching/mapping concepts.
• A server side plugin for generating concept unique identifiers
• Prevent a concept to be edited simultaneously by multiple users
• Ability to classify a large (100,000 concept) namespace within Protege/OWL
• Improved error identification in Protege of classification errors
In PROMPT :
• Faster comparison of large namespaces
• And anything else that would help adapt Protege/OWL and PROMPT to meeting the specific needs of those developing large biomedical terminologies
In NCI BioPortal :
• Service oriented components tailored to needs of specific biomedical communities
• Reusable JSP components
Documentation and Training
• FAQs, lessons learned, how-to guides and similar materials that bear on using run time terminology services to provide practical solutions to a community need
• White papers describing theoretical or demonstrated techniques for distributed development of biomedical terminology
In BiomedGT : NCI CBIIT and the cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG™) are launching Biomedical Grid Terminology (BiomedGT). This new ontology retains some features of NCI Thesaurus (concept orientation, description logic, public accessibility) and some of it's content, but introduces an open, collaborative content development model of operations and reliance on ontology federation. The content of BIOMEDGT will be focused on the needs of the biomedical community working in translational research. It will empower the community to directly participate in extending and refining the terminology upon which they depend. See the BiomedGT launch sheet. Contributions are specifically sought for:
• Implementations to determine points of semantic overlap of namespaces.
• Formal semantics and/or ontology modeling to support federation
• RDF or OWL-based demonstrations of federation among two or more biomedical name spaces
And of course, you are invited to enhance the EVS ODI web page!

• Virtual Software Development team meetings

  Each GForge Project group has regular scheduled informal Web meeting/teleconferences. See the respective GForge projects for the schedule folowed by each group. These meetings provide an opportunity to discuss software development issues, ideas and release plans. Contributors are invited to attend. This is where you ask for and get help and feedback on specific development items - exchange ideas or demonstrate prototypes - direct contact with the EVS development team.

• EVS Software Developers List Serv

  Once becoming a member of a team, you are added to the project's list serv, which offers and opportunity to discuss EVS specific issues with other EVS developers.

• caCORE Developers List Serv

  Once becoming a member of the EVS community, you are automatically considered a member of the caCORE development community. The caCORE development community offers an opportunity to interact with and discuss cross-functional software development related issues.

• The Model Driven Architecture (MDA) is expected to be understood and utilized by contributors
• EVS/caCORE release cycles would be followed incorporating appropriate phases of design, development, testing and deployment
• For suggested EVS model extensions, an understanding of the caCORE architecure and the role of the EVS in providing base semantics is expected and should serve as the launching point
• Demonstrated skills in appropriate programming languages
• Understanding of existing Protege/OWL and Protege applications or of EVS services and functionality.

• EVS model extensions including addition of new objects, new relationships or modification of existing objects

• New search or search paradigm
• Extension to existing architecture or interoperability with other applications
• User interface changes
• Bug fixes

• Extension to an existing tool (i.e., take existing functionality and add additional capabilities to it)

• New or enhancements to Technical Documentation 

• New training module or tutorial