1. Semantic approach to Bioethics in the Ethicsweb European Project Building a semantic architecture for a European Ethics documentation system. Corrado Di Benedetto, Luisa Leone Maurella Della Seta Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy ISKO 2010 Conference Paradigms and conceptual systems in KO Rome, February 23-26, 2010

2. ISKO 2010 Conference 2 Bioethics-related information Scattered through a variety of sources Interdisciplinary nature, affecting science, law and philosophy Retrieving and disseminating exhaustive bioethical documentation is essential to ensure a continuous updating Increasing demand for updated and reliable information

3. ISKO 2010 Conference 3 European Project Ethicsweb Funded under the 7th Framework Program (FP7) of the European Commission Started in June 2008 and including 17 partners Aimed at developing a common European reference focal point for information Special emphasis is placed on the semantic approach

4. ISKO 2010 Conference 4 EthicsWeb Purposes Create a European information system on ethics and science Set up the infrastructure for an advanced systematic documentation, information and communication tool Collect different kinds of documentation like literature, laws, regulations and guidelines, training materials and training programmes, academic exchange programmes, centres, projects and experts, events and news

5. ISKO 2010 Conference 5 What is the Ethicsweb Portal? www.ethicsweb.org www.ethicsweb.org A comprehensive and user-friendly information portal for integrating the existing databases in the field of ethics and science It is a common gateway to distributed information resources within the field of ethics and science Through the portal it is possible to search across data deriving from several data producers

6. ISKO 2010 Conference 6 Work Package 4 (Semantics Exchange schemas - Content Management - Thesauri and Ontologies ) The WP4 has the mission to: Collect different Ethics Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) Release a prototype registry of KOS in Ethics Release semantic standards for different types of databases. Linking already existing databases and portals

7. ISKO 2010 Conference 7 Deliverables of Work Package 4 (1) Registry of Knowledge Organisation Systems Prototype version has been implemented Collecting semantic tools (thesauri, controlled vocabularies, ontologies) in the field of bioethics

8. ISKO 2010 Conference 8 Controlled Vocabularies in Ethics and Science TELS Thesaurus Ethics in the Life Sciences TIB Italian Bioethics T hesaurus Others LCSH Agrovoc …. MESH Ethics descriptors

9. ISKO 2010 Conference 9 Thesaurus Ethics in the Life Sciences Result of a joint project including several partners: DRZE (editor in chief), Bonn; Centre de documentation en éthique - CCNE/Inserm, Paris; Information and Documentation Centre for Ethics in Medicine (IDEM), Göttingen; Interdepartmental Centre for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities, IZEW, Tubingen; Kennedy Institute of Ethics (KIE) First integrated, multilingual, controlled indexing and research tool Designed to include new fields of bioethics, treated either marginally or not at all Adequate coverage of current developments in bioethics – a field of science characterised by heterogeneity and multidisciplinarity – in the international context.

10. ISKO 2010 Conference 10 Subject Areas of TELS

11. ISKO 2010 Conference 11 The Italian Bioethics Theasurus (TIB) Developed by Istituto Superiore di Sanita (ISS) to facilitate indexing and access to documentation in SIBIL database www.iss.it/sibiwww.iss.it/sibi Links terms both hierarchically and by association to restrict or expand the search field Shows synonyms and other words similar to the search term to allow multiple access to the same concept Regularly revised and updated to keep pace with the development of Bioethics in the Italian debate Supported by an online manual, can be accessed through the database and is available in Italian and English.

12. ISKO 2010 Conference 12 TIB Italian-English version (2009)

13. ISKO 2010 Conference 13 National Library of Medicines (NLM) Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) is the controlled vocabulary used for indexing articles for the MEDLINE® subset of PubMed PubMed subset Bioethics Italian Translation of MeSH www.iss.it/site/mesh Medical Subject Headings

14. ISKO 2010 Conference 14 A selection of Ethics related MeSH descriptors Ethics Bioethical Issues Bioethics Bioethical IssuesBioethics Ethics, ClinicalCodes of Ethics Ethics, ClinicalCodes of Ethics Helsinki Declaration Hippocratic Oath Helsinki DeclarationHippocratic Oath ComplicityConflict of Interest ComplicityConflict of Interest Ethical Analysis Casuistry Ethical AnalysisCasuistry Retrospective Moral JudgmentWedge Argument Retrospective Moral JudgmentWedge Argument Ethical RelativismEthical Review Ethical RelativismEthical Review Ethics ConsultationEthical Theory Ethics ConsultationEthical Theory EthicistsEthics, Business EthicistsEthics, Business Ethics CommitteesEthics Committees, Clinical Ethics CommitteesEthics Committees, Clinical Ethics Committees, ResearchEthics, Institutional Ethics Committees, ResearchEthics, Institutional Ethics, Professional Ethics, Clinical Ethics, ProfessionalEthics, Clinical Ethics, Research Therapeutic Equipoise Ethics, ResearchTherapeutic Equipoise Therapeutic Misconception Humanism Feminism HumanismFeminism Morals Conscience MoralsConscience Moral DevelopmentSocial Responsibility Moral DevelopmentSocial Responsibility VirtuesPersonhood VirtuesPersonhood Principle-Based Ethics Beneficence Principle-Based EthicsBeneficence Personal AutonomySocial Justice Personal AutonomySocial Justice Professional Misconduct Scientific Misconduct Professional MisconductScientific Misconduct ComplicityDouble Effect Principle ComplicityDouble Effect Principle

15. ISKO 2010 Conference 15 Deliverables of Work Package 4 (2) Release of standards for sharing information on Documents, News and events, Knowledge Organisation Systems (KOS), Learning resources, Experts, and Projects. Development of application profiles (AP) (i.e. set of metadata elements, policies, and guidelines defined for a particular application) as a mean of data exchange, in order to achieve interoperability among existing realities

16. ISKO 2010 Conference 16 Application Profile The application profile is a schema which consists of data elements drawn from one or more namespaces, combined together by implementors, and optimised for a particular local application Heery R. and Patel M., Application profiles: mixing and matching metadata schemas, Ariadne (25) September 2000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue25/app-profiles/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue25/app-profiles/

17. ISKO 2010 Conference 17 The EthicsWeb Application Profile (AP) For each AP an element set is developed, which include: the elements themselves (e.g. title, creator, publisher); the element refinement(s) (e.g. for the element publisher: publisherName, publisherPlace, publisherContact); encoding schemes (e.g. for KOS: MeSH, LCSH etc.); requirement (Mandatory, Mandatory if Available, Optional); occurrence (Repeatable, Non- repeatable).

18. ISKO 2010 Conference 18 The metadata elements used for EthicsWeb Application Profiles Dublin Core (DC) http://dublincore.org/schemas/xmls/http://dublincore.org/schemas/xmls/ AGRIS http://aims.fao.org/website/The-AGRIS-AP/http://aims.fao.org/website/The-AGRIS-AP/ AGLS http://www.agls.gov.au/schemas/xmls/http://www.agls.gov.au/schemas/xmls/ Friend-of-a-friend (FOAF) http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/ Learning Object Metadata (LOM) http://ltsc.ieee.org/wg12/http://ltsc.ieee.org/wg12/ RSS 2.0 http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.htmlhttp://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html Accessible Information on Development Activities (AiDA) http://aida.developmentgateway.org/ http://aida.developmentgateway.org/

19. ISKO 2010 Conference 19 Integration at the Technical Level - XML based schemas The metadata elements of the EthicsWeb APs correspond to XML elements of the EthicsWeb XML schemas Each schema defines the XML element of the exchange format for the corresponding object type The exchange format is the common denominator of data deriving from different sources

20. ISKO 2010 Conference 20 Logical structure of the XML Schema (1)

21. ISKO 2010 Conference 21 Logical structure of the XML Schema (2)

22. ISKO 2010 Conference 22 Example of XML Metadata (1)

23. ISKO 2010 Conference 23 Example of XML Metadata (2)

24. ISKO 2010 Conference 24 Ethicsweb Architecture

25. ISKO 2010 Conference 25 OAI-PMH Open Access Initiative - Protocol for Metadata Harvesting Is a protocol for automatically collecting data from a provider site The provider site needs to have an OAI-PMH module installed and configured to accept remote calls frome the EthicsWeb Portal The Portal collects data via OAI-PMH at regular intervals Data should conform to the EthicsWeb XML schemas

26. ISKO 2010 Conference 26 Integrating data with EthicsWeb Successful trials were already made in order to merge data from different databases in the field of bioethics PubMed www.pubmed.gov (Bioethics Subset)www.pubmed.gov Belit database www.drze.de/BELIT?la=enwww.drze.de/BELIT?la=en The Ethicsweb application profile and the XML scheme for Document-LIke Objects were successfully used Bibliographic data from other databases, such as SIBIL (Sistema Informativo per la Bioetica In Linea), developed and maintained by the ISS www.iss.it/sibi will be soon implemented as well.www.iss.it/sibi