Guidelines for Voc4Cat¶

The Voc4Cat guidelines have been developed as a blueprint for suggesting, adding, and editing content to the vocabularies developed throughout NFDI4Cat. The aim of this document is to provide guidelines to guarantee consistency and coherence on selection of concepts and terms between all catalysis-related vocabularies in NFDI4Cat.

The first version of the Voc4Cat guidelines, were inspired by the AGROVOC editorial guidelines of FAO.[1] This second updated version aligns our guidelines closer to the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) / National Information Standards Organization (NISO) Z39.19-2005 (R2010) Standard.[2]

The guidelines have been through excessive discussions and were evolved over the course of Task Area 1 (TA1): Ontology Development and Metadata Standards of NFDI4Cat.

Please note that all language dependent parts refer to only the default language (British English).

General recommendations¶

Preferred label¶

The Preferred Label of a concept refers to the primary term used to represent a concept. It should be the most commonly used and widely understood term. Such terms can be drawn from the catalysis-related scientific literature. Between two or more variants of label for a concept, the most frequently used term should be selected as the preferred label. The remaining terms can be used as Alternate Labels (see below). If the choice is not clear, opinions of experts of the field regarding the preferred form of terms may be sought.

Alternate label¶

When a concept can be expressed by two or more terms, the one(s) not selected as the Preferred Label can be used as Alternate Label(s). The relationship between Preferred Label and Alternate Label(s) is an equivalence relationship in which each label is regarded as referring to the same concept. Alternate Label(s) can be e.g., synonyms (terms whose meanings are regarded as the same or nearly the same in a wide range of contexts), lexical or spelling variants (see below) etc.

Spelling variants¶

British English spelling must be used as the spelling standard for the development of Voc4Cat. Exceptions may be made for proper names. If variant spellings exist and are commonly recognized, each should be entered in Voc4Cat, one being the Preferred Label and the rest being used as Alternate Labels. Spelling rules for English:

  1. words ending in -re/-er. Prefer -re: litre, metre;

  2. words ending in -our/-or. Prefer -our: colour;

  3. words ending in -ence/-ense. Prefer -ence (for nouns): licence;

  4. words ending in -l and followed by a suffix. Prefer -ll (not -l): modelling;

  5. words ending in -ize/-ise. Prefer -ize: immobilize, categorize;

  6. words ending in -yse/-yze. Prefer -yse: analyse, catalyse

(Gender-) neutral language¶

(Gender-) neutral language should be used whenever possible.

Duplicates¶

Duplicates of existing concepts must be avoided. Preferred Labels, Alternate Labels, Singular and Plural forms*, hyphenation* should also be considered when checking for the presence of duplicates.

Definitions¶

A formal explanation of the meaning of a concept. The following considerations should be followed when adding definitions:

  1. A good definition explains what a concept is, not what it does.

  2. Only one definition per language is mandatory. The default language for the definitions is English.

  3. A definition is a sentence that requires orthographical rules, such as starting a sentence with a capital letter and ending a sentence with a full stop (period). The definitions need to be concise (ideally one sentence) and clear.

  4. A definition should implicitly explain the difference from closely related concepts.

  5. Circular, imprecise, or negative definitions should be avoided.

  6. A definition of a concept should not start with mentioning the concept that it defines.

  7. If the source of a definition is not the contributor, a trusted and stable source should be used. Credit must be given to the original creator. When copyright or license is restrictive, it must be respected. To identify the source, a URL, or a descriptive source (with details of the publication) can be used.

Things to avoid¶

  1. Trademarked names (e.g., brand names and commercial names). Example: Teflon vs. polytetrafluoroethylene.

  2. Names of individuals (unless as a part of the name of a method or technique)

  3. Names of specific software or models of devices.

  4. Names of policies, programs, or initiatives.

  5. Neologisms, slang, and jargon. When no widely accepted alternative exists, the neologism, slang, or jargon term should be accepted as a term.

Single vs. multi-word (compound) terms¶

  1. If terms are seen in both multi-word and one-word forms (e.g., “thermal conductivity” vs. “thermoconductivity”), the preferred term should be the one-word form. The two-word form can be included as an Alternate Label.

  2. Multi-word (compound) terms should express a single concept or unit of thought. Complex compound concepts are discouraged. It is recommended (if possible) to split compound words into simpler concepts.

  3. Multi-word (compound) terms should be established as terms in the following circumstances:

  1. Splitting the parts would lead to ambiguity or a loss of meaning.

  2. One component of the term is not relevant to the scope of Voc4Cat or is too vague to exist as an independent term.

  3. The meaning of the compound term as a whole is not the sum of the meaning of its parts.

  4. The compound term has become so familiar in common use, or in the field covered by Voc4Cat, that it is considered for practical purposes to represent a single concept.

Singular vs. plural¶

Where the singular and plural forms of a term represent different concepts, separate terms for each should be added to Voc4Cat as appropriate. The distinction should be indicated by a qualifier (e.g., Wood (material), woods (forested areas)).

Count nouns¶

Concepts that are subject to the question “How many?” but not “How much?” should normally be expressed as plurals.

Noncount (mass) nouns¶

Names of materials or substances that are subject to the question “How much?” but not “How many?” should be expressed in the singular. If the community of users served by Voc4Cat regards a given substance or material as a class with more than one member, the class should be expressed in the plural (e.g., plastics). The names of abstract concepts, e.g., activities, properties, disciplines etc., should be expressed in the singular, even though some of the terms are subject to the question “How much?”.

Lower vs. capital letters¶

  1. Concepts should be written in all lower-case letters.

  2. The first letter of proper names must be a capital, when the proper name occurs within longer terms, such in combination with “method”, “theory”, or “process” (e.g., Brønsted acid site, Lewis acid site, Röntgen crystallography, Langmuir-Hinshelwood mechanism).

Grammatical forms¶

Nouns¶

The grammatical form of a concept must be a noun or noun phrase. Noun phrases are compound terms that may be established as terms if they represent a single concept. When possible, noun phrases should exclude prepositions (e.g., carbohydrate metabolism rather than metabolism of carbohydrates). Terms in the form of prepositional noun phrases should be restricted to concepts that cannot be expressed in any other way, or that have become idiomatic (e.g., burden of proof, state of the art).

Verbs¶

Verbs should be nominalized (transformed into nouns). Activities should be represented by nouns or gerunds (e.g., freezing rather than freeze, distillation rather than distill).

Adjectives¶

Adjectives and adjectival phrases used alone may be established as terms in Voc4Cat under certain special circumstances. Single adjectives may be used in a “nominal” way; that is, the noun is obvious from the context, or the adjective is used to describe and attribute of the concept object other than topic, such as color or size. Certain noun phrases may be used to modify other nouns, e.g., high frequency can modify the noun waves. The guidelines for adjectives may be applied to such noun phrases. Adjectives should only be used in compound terms, such as “continuous flow”, but never alone. The use of adjectives (without a noun), verbs, and initial articles (e.g., “A”, “An”, “The”) should be avoided. Example: drying in an oven vs. drying in oven (prefer drying in oven).

Adverbs¶

Single adverbs are rarely used. Adverbs such as “very” or “highly” should not be used alone as terms. A phrase beginning with such an adverb may be accepted as a term only when it has acquired a specialized meaning within a domain (e.g., very high frequency).

Typographical marks¶

Hyphens¶

The non-hyphenated version of a concept is always preferred, unless the hyphenated version is always the one used in literature. Both versions of a concept (hyphenated and non-hyphenated) must be included (one of them as an alternate label). Examples: photoexcitation vs. photo-excitation, pretreatment vs. pre-treatment, counter electrode vs. counter-electrode, transition metal vs. transition-metal. Hyphens should be retained in topical terms when dropping them would lead to ambiguity. Hyphens should be retained where they occur as part of proper nouns (see also 7.5.1), abbreviations (see also 7.11), or chemical names (see also 7.12).

Parentheses¶

Parentheses should be avoided in Voc4Cat concepts and definitions whenever possible. Parentheses should be used only to enclose qualifiers and trademark indicators, or when they constitute part of a term.

Apostrophes¶

Apostrophes: Apostrophes generally should not be used in Voc4Cat concepts. Two exceptions:

  1. Possessive Case: Apostrophes indicating the possessive case, whether in a singular or plural, should be retained. The singular form is most frequently found in eponyms.

  2. Proper names: Apostrophes that are part of proper names must be retained.

Slashes¶

The slash (/) must be avoided (e.g., oxidation / reduction, forward / backward reaction, working / counter electrodes) whenever possible. Two separate concepts must be defined if the terms differ in meaning, or one of them should be set as an Alternate Label if the meaning is the same. Antonyms (concepts with opposite definitions) should be generated into a separate concept.

Prepositional phrases¶

Prepositional phrases should be avoided (e.g., alcohol oxidation rather than oxidation of alcohol, catalyst pretreatment rather than pretreatment of catalyst).

Punctuation, diacritics, and special characters¶

Appropriate punctuation, diacritics and other special characters of an individual language should be used (e.g., ü, ö, ß, ô, ñ). Examples: Ångström, Brønsted acid sites, Röntgen crystallography. Mössbauer effect. Symbols and punctuation marks should not be used except in trademarks and proper names.

Empty spaces and commas¶

(Extra) empty spaces must be avoided before, within and after a term. Commas should be avoided unless in chemical substances. Unnecessary empty spaces could compromise search results. Examples (using · as space):

  1. ·Semiconductor

  2. Semiconductor·

  3. Charge··transfer

Initial articles¶

Initial articles in terms should be avoided except when required to convey essential information. Remove the initial article when the term is clear without it. If the initial article is an integral part of a proper name, and should be searchable, it should be included in the term in direct order.

Abbreviations and acronyms¶

  1. The full form (written out) of a word / term should be generally selected as the preferred term. The abbreviated form or acronym should be included as the non-preferred label (e.g., gas chromatography vs. GC, density functional theory vs. DFT).

  2. Abbreviations and acronyms should be selected as preferred labels of terms only when they have become so well established that the full form of the term or proper name is rarely used. In this case, the full form of the term should be included as an alternate label.

  3. Many acronyms and abbreviations stand for more than one word or phrase; the full form of the term should therefore be selected as the term in preference to the abbreviated form, even when the abbreviation has only one value in the domain of Voc4Cat.

Chemical compounds and elements¶

In principle, Voc4Cat does not accept terms for chemical compounds already defined in other controlled vocabularies (e.g., the *Chemical Entities of Biological Interest - ChEBI). In cases and if contributing to ChEBI is not an option, a chemical compound or element is not defined elsewhere, the following guidelines should be followed for the term to be considered for Voc4Cat:

  1. Chemical compounds and elements in their full form, are written in lowercase, such as “carbon”, while the chemical symbol(s) is(are) always capitalized, such as “C”.

  2. The full form is always the preferred term, whereas the symbol is the non-preferred term.

  3. Chemical compounds and chemical elements written out are non-countable nouns and should be explained in the singular.

  4. The definition should contain a unique identifier for chemical substances, such as the CAS number.

  5. British English spelling is recommended, e.g., prefer aluminium (UK) over aluminum (USA).

Loanwords and translations¶

Loanwords are terms borrowed from the other languages that have become naturalized in the borrowing language. If such terms are well established in the catalysis domain, they should be admitted into Voc4Cat. Diacritics should be included if required. In all cases where a concept can be expressed by both a loanword and a translated equivalent, the most widely used of the two should be used as the preferred label and the other as an alternate label.

References¶

  1. FAO. 2022. The AGROVOC Editorial Guidelines 2020 – Second edition. Rome. DOI: 10.4060/cb8640en

  2. “Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and Management of Monolingual Controlled Vocabularies”, ANSI/NISO Z39.19 – 2005 (R2010). DOI: 10.3789/ansi.niso.z39.19-2005R2010.