The Information Artifact Ontology (IAO) is a new ontology of information entities, originally driven by work by the OBI digital entity and realizable information entity branch.

The IAO mailing-list is available at http://groups.google.com/group/information-ontology

Files

The IAO file imports all files needed for the full version of the IAO ontology:

• obsolete classes and properties Stable version Development version
• iao-main Stable version Development version

As part of the IAO project, ontology metadata, a distinct file defining common metadata properties has been created. This file can be used by any project, independently of IAO. Documentation is available here

Finally, IAO-dev is an experimental version that includes some examples from OBI and some bits of OWL 2.

A reasonable place to start browsing the IAO is at the term information content entity or at the property is about

Conference calls

IAO conference calls take place on a regular basis, usually via Skype. Information about those is posted on our mailing-list, and agenda and minutes are available here. Anybody is welcome to join at any time.

Credits

The IAO is a descendant of the DENRIE branch of the OBI Project, edited by Chris Stoeckert and other OBI team members. Currently IAO development is being driven by Alan Ruttenberg, Barry Smith and Werner Ceusters and several members of the OBI team, including Melanie Courtot, Bjoern Peters, and James Malone (who acts as spiritual guide). Several other people are providing support and feedback to the project.

Presentations

The first workshop on the IAO took place in Boston at the MIT Stata Center, June 9, 2008.

In July 2009, a tutorial From Basic Formal Ontology to the Information Artifact Ontology was presented, colocated at the ICBO: International Conference on Biomedical Ontology. Slides that include a section on topics in the IAO are here. Other presentations may be of interest.