title: Recognizing lexical and semantic change patterns in evolving life science ontologies to inform mapping adaptation.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Mappings established between life science ontologies require significant efforts to maintain them up to date due to the size and frequent evolution of these ontologies. In consequence, automatic methods for applying modifications on mappings are highly demanded. The accuracy of such methods relies on the available description about the evolution of ontologies, especially regarding concepts involved in mappings. However, from one ontology version to another, a further understanding of ontology changes relevant for supporting mapping adaptation is typically lacking.
  
  
  METHODS
  This research work defines a set of change patterns at the level of concept attributes, and proposes original methods to automatically recognize instances of these patterns based on the similarity between attributes denoting the evolving concepts. This investigation evaluates the benefits of the proposed methods and the influence of the recognized change patterns to select the strategies for mapping adaptation.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The summary of the findings is as follows: (1) the Precision (>60%) and Recall (>35%) achieved by comparing manually identified change patterns with the automatic ones; (2) a set of potential impact of recognized change patterns on the way mappings is adapted. We found that the detected correlations cover ∼66% of the mapping adaptation actions with a positive impact; and (3) the influence of the similarity coefficient calculated between concept attributes on the performance of the recognition algorithms.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The experimental evaluations conducted with real life science ontologies showed the effectiveness of our approach to accurately characterize ontology evolution at the level of concept attributes. This investigation confirmed the relevance of the proposed change patterns to support decisions on mapping adaptation.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Campo Limpo Paulista, Rua Guatemala, 167, 13231-230 Campo Limpo Paulista, SP, Brazil; Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, 29 Avenue John F. Kennedy, L-1855 Luxembourg, Luxembourg. Electronic address: juliocesardosreis@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Julio Cesar
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Dos Reis
authors.affiliation: Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, 29 Avenue John F. Kennedy, L-1855 Luxembourg, Luxembourg.
authors.forename: Duy
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Dinh
authors.affiliation: Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, 29 Avenue John F. Kennedy, L-1855 Luxembourg, Luxembourg.
authors.forename: Marcos
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Da Silveira
authors.affiliation: Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, 29 Avenue John F. Kennedy, L-1855 Luxembourg, Luxembourg.
authors.forename: Cédric
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Pruski
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Recherche en Informatique, University of Paris-Sud, Bâtiment 650 (Ada Lovelace), 91405 Orsay, France.
authors.forename: Chantal
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Reynaud-Delaître
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D064229:Biological Ontologies; D006801:Humans; D009323:Natural Language Processing; D012660:Semantics
keywords: Biomedical ontologies; Mapping adaptation; Mapping evolution; Mapping maintenance; Ontology changes; Ontology evolution; Ontology versions