Abstract
Electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs) and other data management systems are increasingly replacing more traditional means of documenting experimental processes to foster (meta)data capture and reuse. However, the usage of free-text hinders automated, large-scale data processing and invites a variety of data quality issues. Ontologies can address this issue by providing the necessary vocabulary and context — a quality that also puts them at the core of the FAIR principles. The reusability of free-text lab notes increases enormously through semantic descriptions of experimental data. Still, to date, many domains are lacking sufficiently expressive ontologies for more advanced features like consistency checks at data collection or large cross-experiment analyses. For the field of polymer membranes, we present PolyMat, an ontology to document laboratory experiments and their results. Located at the crossroads of material science and chemistry, this ontology acts as a bridge and can enable new cross-domain discoveries. It is specifically designed to be used in electronic laboratory notebooks and applicable for standardisation of terminology there, to ease and improve FAIR-compliant data collection from the get-go.
DOI Link to Publication