Ten Simple Rules for making a vocabulary FAIR

TL;DR

This paper provides ten practical rules for transforming legacy glossaries into FAIR vocabularies with unique IRIs and standard representations, enhancing data interoperability and integration.

Contribution

It introduces a clear set of guidelines for converting legacy vocabularies into FAIR-compliant, machine-readable, and web-accessible vocabularies, emphasizing IRI assignment and standard serialization.

Findings

Guidelines for creating FAIR vocabularies from legacy glossaries

Emphasis on assigning distinct IRIs to each term

Use of SKOS or OWL for machine-readable representation

Abstract

We present ten simple rules that support converting a legacy vocabulary -- a list of terms available in a print-based glossary or table not accessible using web standards -- into a FAIR vocabulary. Various pathways may be followed to publish the FAIR vocabulary, but we emphasise particularly the goal of providing a distinct IRI for each term or concept. A standard representation of the concept should be returned when the individual IRI is de-referenced, using SKOS or OWL serialised in an RDF-based representation for machine-interchange, or in a web-page for human consumption. Guidelines for vocabulary and item metadata are provided, as well as development and maintenance considerations. By following these rules you can achieve the outcome of converting a legacy vocabulary into a standalone FAIR vocabulary, which can be used for unambiguous data annotation. In turn, this increases data interoperability and enables data integration.