Vocabulary Standard Governance and Review Processes

The VCDE WS has established a number of criteria that every caBIG “standard” vocabulary should satisfy. Briefly, these are:

• URU (Understandability, Reproducibility, Usability)
• Quality of Documentation
• Maintenance and Extensions (Change Management)
• Accessibility and Distribution
• Intellectual Property Considerations
• Considerations Regarding Mapped Terminologies
• QC and QA
• Concept Definitions
• Community Acceptance
• Reporting Requirements

These criteria are being used to evaluate several terminologies/ontologies to develop an implementable, scalable model to review vocabularies/ontologies for us as a standard within caBIG™ . It is critical to be able to review and approve vocabulary standards from diverse scientific domains in a standardized manner. This will ensure that the review can occur in a domain independent manner. The following ontologies have been reviewed with the criteria listed above:

• Gene Ontology(GO) - The GO project has developed three structured controlled vocabularies (ontologies) that describe gene products in terms of their associated biological processes, cellular components and molecular functions in a species-independent manner. There are three separate aspects to this effort: first, the development and maintenance of the ontologies themselves; second, the annotation of gene products, which entails making associations between the ontologies and the genes and gene products in the collaborating databases, and third, development of tools that facilitate the creation, maintenance and use of ontologies.
  
  • The Gene Ontology Home
  • Vocabcriteria home on GForge (GForge is a separate colloborative working area utilized by many caBIG™ workspaces to collect and organize additional materials).
• Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (CTCAE) - The NCI Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events v3.0 is a descriptive terminology which can be utilized for Adverse Event (AE) reporting. A grading (severity) scale is provided for each AE term.
  
  • Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events v3.0 (CTCAE) - A descriptive terminology which can be utilized for Adverse Event (AE) reporting. A grading (severity) scale is provided for each AE term.
  • Summary of Recommendations for Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events v3.0 (CTCAE)
  • CTCAE home on GForge (GForge is a separate colloborative working area utilized by many caBIG™ workspaces to collect and organize additional materials).
• NCI Thesaurus (NCIt). The NCI Thesaurus is a cancer focused terminology that was initially agreed upon to be used as the controlled terminology source in caBIG™.
  
  • NCI Enterprise Vocabulary Services (EVS) - A set of services and resources that address NCI's needs for controlled vocabulary.