LOF-P-016: Documented use

Draft for ratification

Part of the founding draft of the LOF principles.

Summary

The ontology has documented users, or a credible plan for use.

Purpose

Ontologies built for no one tend to drift from real needs. Documented use shows that the ontology solves an actual problem and gives maintainers a community to consult.

Recommendations and requirements

1. By the time of admission to accepted, the registry entry lists at least one independent use in its usages field (a dataset, application, project, or publication).
2. At draft and candidate status, a planned use suffices.

Implementation

Record usages in the ontology's registry metadata file.

Examples

See the LOF ontology template.

Criteria for review

Listed usages exist and are independent of the maintainers where possible.

Automated check: Registry schema validation of usages.

Feedback and discussion

Propose changes to this principle by pull request against docs/principles/lof-p-016-users.md, or open a thread in Discussions.

Discussion