An Upper Ontology for Modern Science Branches and Related Entities

Recent developments in the context of semantic technologies have given rise to ontologies for modelling scientific information in various fields of science. Over the past years, we have been engaged in the development of the Science Knowledge Graph Ontologies (SKGO), a set of ontologies for modelling research findings in various fields of science. This paper introduces the Modern Science Ontology (ModSci), an upper ontology for modelling relationships between modern science branches and related entities, including scientific discoveries, phenomena, prominent scientists, instruments, etc. ModSci provides a unifying framework for the various domain ontologies that make up the Science Knowledge Graph Ontology suite. Well-known ontology development guidelines and principles have been followed in the development and publication of the resource. We present several use cases and motivational scenarios to express the motivation behind developing the ontology and, therefore, its potential uses. We deem that within the next few years, a science knowledge graph is likely to become a crucial component for organizing and exploring scientific work.