BioPortal: an open community resource for sharing, searching, and utilizing biomedical ontologies

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Informatics
• Knowledge Representation
• Data Management

Background:

• BioPortal serves as a central hub for biomedical ontologies, crucial for organizing and standardizing life science knowledge.
• The platform has evolved since 2005, now hosting a vast collection of 1549 ontologies, with 1182 publicly available.

Purpose of the Study:

• To provide an updated overview of BioPortal's capabilities and recent enhancements.
• To highlight BioPortal's role in facilitating the discovery, utilization, and management of biomedical ontologies.

Main Methods:

• The BioPortal platform offers a web interface for browsing, searching, and annotating with ontologies.
• Programmatic access is available via a REST API, enabling integration with external applications.
• Recent features include a knowledge graph, unified data model, popularity ratings, and a streamlined ontology change request system.

Main Results:

• BioPortal currently hosts 1549 ontologies, with 1182 accessible to the public.
• New features enhance interoperability, knowledge integration, and user contribution through automated GitHub Pull Requests for ontology changes.

Conclusions:

• BioPortal continues to be an indispensable resource for the biomedical community, supporting diverse use cases through its extensive ontology repository and advanced functionalities.
• The platform's ongoing development, including knowledge graph integration and improved contribution workflows, further solidifies its importance in biomedical research and data science.