A concept tries to capture the idea behind a classification of entities^1, allowing us to reason about everything in the class as if it were one thing. For example, the ideas (mental representations) you have when processing the sentences "I can drink beer from a beer glass' and 'I can drink beer from a coffee mug' shows that the concepts that are behind 'beer glass' and 'coffee mug' differ. Note that in order to communicate about this idea, we also need a word or phrase (i.e., a term) that we can use to refer to (instances of) this idea.

The terminology pattern provides an overview of how this concept fits in with related concepts.

version 8, commit 7d2d896, created 2021-07-23, last modified 2021-11-30, contributors Daniel Hardman - Rieks - RieksJ

The set of all terms that are defined in each of the scopes under the conventions as defined by TOIP's Concepts and Terminology Working Group.

The purpose of having a corpus is that it allows for the development of tools that support authors and groups of people to better communicate, by enabling them to refer to the definition of a term whenever that term is used. This is particularly beneficial when a specific term can be interpreted in different ways (according to different definitions).

Tools that we envisage will query for terms from the corpus, and use that e.g. to create a custom glossary document, a terminology appendix in a paper you write, or as a resource from which you generate pop-up balloons in a website you create.

version 2, commit 79be1a4, created 2021-07-12, last modified 2021-10-11, contributors Rieks

To evolve concept and term data in the direction of greater quality and richer content within a specific scope. Any community of interest or community of practice that uses terms wikis is encouraged to design a curation process to best achieve its goals; it appoints one or more curators to lead that work. Curation happens in an iterative fashion, by repeated review and contribution. High-quality data is generally assigned a status like accepted, but it can always be reviewed, improved, and re-evaluated:

version 9, commit 95a9f97, created 2021-07-06, last modified 2021-11-23, contributors Rieks - Daniel Hardman

A Definition is a text that helps parties to have the same understanding about the meaning of a term, and hence enables communications. The quality of a definition is the extent in which parties can use it to actually demonstrate that they have the same understanding.

The problem that definitions (as we see them) contribute to solving is misunderstandings that may arise as every party has its own knowledge and autonomously determines the semantics it uses to express itself in texts/speech/pictures, and interpret that of other parties. The fact that the semantics of parties is subjective makes it realistic to assume that the meaning that a party intends to convey as it expresses itself is not the same as how another party interprets that expression - a 'misunderstanding'.

All parties have learned, with varying degrees of sophistication, to identify misunderstandings, and ways to recover from that.

A common mechanism for reducing the likelihood of misunderstandings to occur, is to associate terms with texts that are crafted to help parties have the same understanding, i.e. definitions. This mechanism is sometimes overrated in the sense that definitions are often considered to be universally valid rather than only useful in specific scopes.

Therefore, we insist that such texts

• are associated with a scope within which they are considered to be valid/useful (for the objectives that parties pursue in that scope);
• are phrased as a criterion that every such party can evaluate so as to determine whether or not something qualifies to be refered to by that term. The quality of such texts is the extent in which parties reach the same conclusion as they evaluate the criterion in an arbitrary use-case that is relevant for the scope.

The terminology pattern provides an overview of how this concept fits in with related concepts. The eSSIF-Lab terminology process provides guidance for making and maintaining quality definitions.

version 2, commit 8d42449, created 2021-07-23, last modified 2021-11-22, contributors Rieks - RieksJ

A Dictionary is an alphabetically sorted list of terms, each of which has at least one explanation. Each term may have multiple such explanations, which come from different scopes/contexts. Note that a dictionary is not a glossary, the difference being that a glossary lists the terminology of a single scope/context, whereas a dictionary contains terms from different scopes/contexts.

The terminology pattern provides an overview of how this concept fits in with related concepts.

version 5, commit 821ad25, created 2021-07-23, last modified 2021-11-22, contributors Rieks - Daniel Hardman - RieksJ

An alphabetically sorted list of terms with short explanations, usually aimed to help people understand texts around a certain (set of) topic(s) in some scope. A glossary typically lists the terminology that is specific to its scope.

Within TOIP, glossaries of a scope are (to be) generated automatically. They typically include the terms that are defined within the scope, as well as terms that are defined elsewhere.

version 1, commit b23aba0, created 2021-07-07, contributors Rieks

A common context -- consisting of a community of interest or community of practice, plus its associated knowledge domain, processes, and shared purpose -- that surrounds a cohesive set of concepts and their associated terms. The community itself curates these terms, thereby establishing and maintaining the specific terminology it needs for its purpose(s).

A scope is what disambiguates stud (an animal used for breeding) from stud (a vertical support for a wall in construction) from stud (a form of unidirectional tape used in high-tech fabrics).

Scopes are also used to define the content of a glossary; most glossaries consist of all terms in one scope. (Glossaries may import or reference terms from other scopes, but since such terms will be managed by a different community, they have different versioning and release formalities.)

version 6, commit a401c9f, created 2021-07-06, last modified 2021-10-11, contributors Rieks - Daniel Hardman

A scoped term is a term that is part of one specified scope. Thus, a scoped term refers to exactly 1 concept (and its definition)

The terminology pattern provides an overview of how this concept fits in with related concepts.

version 1, commit 6e50b4b, created 2022-04-25, contributors Rieks

We use the term semantics to refer to the mapping between (tangible) terms and (intangible) concepts (their meaning, the ideas behind it). Semantics are scoped, i.e. every scope has its own semantic mapping. This implies that every party has - and maintains - its own (subjective) semantics, which is its subjective mapping of a set of terms onto the concepts/ideas in its knowledge. The (erroneous) assumption that parties would (automagically) share a semantics is the cause of many misunderstandings, and hence should be identified and deleted as soon as possible.

version 2, commit ee66765, created 2021-07-23, last modified 2021-11-22, contributors Rieks - RieksJ

A tag is a small alphanumeric string that is used to refer to and/or identify a terminology-scope. It starts with # character, and is followed by a short, lowercase abbreviation for that scope that is readily interpretable by TOIP members.

version 1, commit dc5cd85, created 2021-11-16, contributors Drummond Reed

A word or phrase that is used in a scope in a specific meaning, typically referring to a specific concept. This meaning may deviate from the meanings that this word or phrase has in other scopes and in everyday language. Also, in other scopes, different words or phrases may be used as synonyms.

version 5, commit 2d05646, created 2021-07-07, last modified 2021-08-25, contributors Rieks

The set of terms that are needed within a scope for communicating and reasoning. Typically, a terminology consists of a set of terms that are defined and curated by the scope itself, and another set of terms that the curators of that scope have selected for use, but are defined elsewhere. Typically, a scope would have a glossary that lists all terms in its terminology.

version 2, commit 515a134, created 2021-07-07, last modified 2021-10-11, contributors Rieks

A set of parties who choose to collaborate to realize a specific set of objectives, and realize that in order to realize them, they need a cohesive set of terms (a terminology) that each of these parties can rely on to be interpreted in the same way by all members of that community, and which they operationalize by creating and maintaining this terminology. They do so by:

• developing a set of terms that is specific to them, and help to realize their objectives. They can do this by creating and maintaining a terms wiki, and develop a curation process for managing (changes in) the definitions of such terms.
• determining which terms they will be using within their scope in the meaning as defined by others.

From this, they can create and (automatically) publish a glossary that contains all such terms (i.e. both defined by themselves as by others), which will be the authoritative register for terminology within the scope of realizing the objectives for this community.

version 5, commit 247fc4f, created 2021-08-30, last modified 2021-10-11, contributors Rieks - Drummond Reed

A wiki that is dedicated to the formal management of terms that are specific for (some purposes within) a scope and that conforms to conventions defined by ToIP Foundation's Concepts and Terminology Working Group.

The terminology that is used within a scope consists of all these terms, as well as terms that are defined elsewhere. A scope would typically have a glossary that lists all terms in its terminology.

A terms wiki should be curated by (designated representatives of) the terms community for whose purposes the terms are defined.

version 13, commit 27a7d86, created 2021-07-06, last modified 2022-06-09, contributors Drummond Reed - Rieks - Daniel Hardman

A vocabulary is the complete set of words and phrases that one or more parties have at their disposal for reasoning and communicating about any topic. Since they are often interested in specific topics, terminologies may be subsets of their vocabularies.

version 3, commit 4fccab5, created 2021-07-23, last modified 2021-11-22, contributors Rieks - RieksJ