Speaker
Description
Terminologies are essential for semantically linking research data across disciplines, ensuring conceptual alignment even with different nomenclatures. Standardised terminologies promote interoperability and data integration, making data understandable and reusable across various sources and fields. Furthermore, terminologies are used in services and tools for annotating and linking research, necessitating the development of several Terminology Services (TSs) for publishing, describing, and curating terminologies. Aligning, managing, and developing these TSs is challenging but crucial for consensus-building and harmonisation across disciplines. [1]
Since its first participation [2] at the UC4B in 2024, the Basic Service Terminology Services 4 NFDI (TS4NFDI) has moved from the Initialisation Phase to the Integration Phase. During the Integration Phase, the TS4NFDI project team continued to work towards the following objectives: standardising and harmonising terminology management within the NFDI, facilitating consensus and interoperability across disciplines, and achieving a shared knowledge representation framework. To accomplish these objectives, TS4NFDI developed the following components during the Integration Phase: a Service Portal, a centralised API Gateway, a Terminology Service Suite (TSS), and an NFDI-wide Mapping Service.
The Service Portal [3] addresses the needs mentioned above by offering a single point of access, enabling users to conveniently discover, compare, and utilise relevant terminologies across existing TSs of relevance for disciplines in the NFDI. It also provides a dashboard for configuring the various parameters of the underlying API Gateway. The API Gateway is a centralised, adaptable service that enables federated calls across multiple TSs within the NFDI and beyond. The TSS complements these components by providing a collection of web widgets that facilitate the integration of TSs into other services, and offering a rich user experience for interacting with terminologies. Finally, the NFDI-wide Mapping Service facilitates cross-domain interoperability by aligning terminologies from different disciplines. It allows users to create, manage, retrieve, and review mappings between concepts from different terminologies.
In addition to the technical development of service components, TS4NFDI established its own incubator programme during the Integration Phase. The programme was a resounding success, attracting around 30 projects from 18 different consortia involved. This contribution will provide an overview of the TS4NFDI incubator programme, showcasing highlights of each of its four cycles.
As an outlook, the contribution will provide a first glimpse of the approved Ramp-Up Phase of TS4NFDI, during which the project will evolve into a sustainable, operational Basic Service for the NFDI consortia. Building on the results of the Integration Phase, the focus will be on scaling and maturing the four service components, establishing governance and long-term sustainability frameworks, and strengthening community engagement through the TS4NFDI incubator programme. During the Ramp-Up Phase, TS4NFDI focuses on further integration into the EOSC ecosystem, i.e. EOSC Node Germany. [4] To achieve this, the project will contribute to selected EOSC-related events, focusing particularly on terminology infrastructures and interoperability.
Keywords: terminology service, ontology mappings, ontology, terminology, semantic web
[1] Baum, Roman, Kolja Bailly, Syphax Bouazzouni, et al. 2024. Terminology Services 4 NFDI (TS4NFDI) - Integration Phase Proposal. October 11. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13921325.
[2] Baum, Roman, Jan Fillies, Naouel Karam, Oliver Koepler, Pooya Oladazimi, and Julia Sasse. 2024. ‘First Steps of the Basic Service Terminology Services 4 NFDI - Step by Step through the Initialization to the Integration Phase’. November 21. https://events.gwdg.de/event/658/contributions/2387/.
[3] Oladazimi, Pooya, Kolja Bailly, Roman Baum, et al. 2025. TS4NFDI Service Portal. August 4. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16735917.
[4] Baum, Roman, Julia Sasse, Jakob Voß, Naouel Karam, and Oliver Koepler. 2026. Terminology Services 4 NFDI (TS4NFDI) - Ramp-Up Phase Proposal. July 3. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21258614.
| background | TS4NFDI |
|---|