NFDI MatWerk Ontology (MWO)

publications, software, and domain actors. Ontological Foundation MWO (MatWerk Ontology) v3.0.1 — domain-specific extensions for materials science and engineering NFDIcore — shared vocabulary for all NFDI consortia resources Named Graph Statistics GraphTriplesSubjectsTypesspreadsheets_assertions35,9377,821131 spreadsheets_inferences80,5797,345162 spreadsheets_validated97,3887,896179 zenodo_validated13,3611,79645 endpoints_validated15,7943,44341 Published: 2026-05-20 SPARQL endpoint: https://nfdi.fiz-karlsruhe.de/matwerk/shmarql/ Source code: https://github.com/ISE-FIZKarlsruhe/matwerk This work is part of the consortium NFDI-MatWerk, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under the National Research Data Infrastructure – NFDI 38/1 – project number 460247524.

practices (e.g., OBO and ODK), and reusable ontology design patterns, while closely linking to initiatives such as PMDco, MWO, and NFDIcore. A key goal is to enable the consistent integration of heterogeneous data into the MSE Knowledge Graph (MSE-KG), supported by documentation, training, and practical examples, thereby contributing to a well-connected and FAIR-compliant semantic infrastructure.

Data Infrastructure (NFDI)-MatWerk Ontology (MWO), as a semantic foundation to standardize metadata, link distributed datasets, and support digital research data management (RDM) in MSE. MWO addresses the need for the structured, standardized, and semantically rich representation of key entities, processes, and resources involved in the generation, sharing, and reuse of MSE research data. Aligned with the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) , MWO develops as a modular extension of the NFDIcore ontology, and reuses Platform MaterialDigital core ontology (PMDco) MWO offers broad semantic coverage, modeling elements such as researchers, organizations, projects, software, workflows, datasets, metadata schemas, instruments, events, and services. It supports modular, scalable development through ontology design patterns (ODPs) and is maintained via the Ontology Development Kit (ODK) following best practices from the Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry. MWO also serves as the foundation for the MSE Knowledge Graph (MS-KG), which integrates semantically interlinked research data across the NFDI-MatWerk consortium and wider MSE community.

interoperability and reproducibility in materials science and engineering (MSE) research data processing. The NFDI MatWerk Ontology (MWO) is a unified framework developed by the Task Area Ontologies for Materials Science (TA-OMS) within the NFDI-MatWerk initiative. Its primary goal of MWO is to standardize the representation of materials data, ensuring consistency and interoperability across diverse datasets and research activities. By creating structured vocabularies and frameworks, MWO facilitates efficient data discovery, integration, and reuse, thereby enhancing researchers' ability to find, share, and utilize materials data effectively. The newest version of MWO (V3.0.0) has been mapped to the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) and NFDIcore ontologies and integrated well with Platform MaterialDigital Core Ontology (PMDco v3.0.0). This talk showcases example ontology design patterns (ODPs) developed using MWO and their application in representing practical MSE-based use cases, highlighting their capacity to enable scalable, reusable, and semantically robust knowledge frameworks. ODPs are reusable and modular components that encapsulate best practices for solving common challenges in ontology development, thus help domain experts and developers to create consistent, efficient, and extensible ontologies. The example structural, content-based, and presentation ODPs were designed to define foundational arrangements of entities, address domain-specific knowledge, and optimize user interaction with ontologies. To illustrate the practical utility of ODPs, we presented several use cases within the MSE domain, such as representing metadata for materials, instruments, large-scale facilities, researchers, organizations, educational events, resources, datasets, data portals, and material research software. Through these cases, we emphasize how ODPs facilitate development by offering standardized templates for tasks such as hierarchy modeling, semantic relationship management, and data source integration, while also supporting ontology-driven solutions that are technically sound and adaptable to changing domain requirements.

interoperability and reproducibility in materials science and engineering (MSE) research data processing. The NFDI MatWerk Ontology (MWO) is a unified framework developed by the Task Area Ontologies for Materials Science (TA-OMS) within the NFDI-MatWerk initiative. Its primary goal of MWO is to standardize the representation of materials data, ensuring consistency and interoperability across diverse datasets and research activities. By creating structured vocabularies and frameworks, MWO facilitates efficient data discovery, integration, and reuse, thereby enhancing researchers' ability to find, share, and utilize materials data effectively. The newest version of MWO (V3.0.0) has been mapped to the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) and NFDIcore ontologies and integrated well with Platform MaterialDigital Core Ontology (PMDco v3.0.0). This talk showcases example ontology design patterns (ODPs) developed using MWO and their application in representing practical MSE-based use cases, highlighting their capacity to enable scalable, reusable, and semantically robust knowledge frameworks. ODPs are reusable and modular components that encapsulate best practices for solving common challenges in ontology development, thus help domain experts and developers to create consistent, efficient, and extensible ontologies. The example structural, content-based, and presentation ODPs were designed to define foundational arrangements of entities, address domain-specific knowledge, and optimize user interaction with ontologies. To illustrate the practical utility of ODPs, we presented several use cases within the MSE domain, such as representing metadata for materials, instruments, large-scale facilities, researchers, organizations, educational events, resources, datasets, data portals, and material research software. Through these cases, we emphasize how ODPs facilitate development by offering standardized templates for tasks such as hierarchy modeling, semantic relationship management, and data source integration, while also supporting ontology-driven solutions that are technically sound and adaptable to changing domain requirements.

Data Infrastructure (NFDI)-MatWerk Ontology (MWO), as a semantic foundation to standardize metadata, link distributed datasets, and support digital research data management (RDM) in MSE. MWO addresses the need for the structured, standardized, and semantically rich representation of key entities, processes, and resources involved in the generation, sharing, and reuse of MSE research data. Aligned with the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) , MWO develops as a modular extension of the NFDIcore ontology, and reuses Platform MaterialDigital core ontology (PMDco) MWO offers broad semantic coverage, modeling elements such as researchers, organizations, projects, software, workflows, datasets, metadata schemas, instruments, events, and services. It supports modular, scalable development through ontology design patterns (ODPs) and is maintained via the Ontology Development Kit (ODK) following best practices from the Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry. MWO also serves as the foundation for the MSE Knowledge Graph (MS-KG), which integrates semantically interlinked research data across the NFDI-MatWerk consortium and wider MSE community.

Data Infrastructure (NFDI)‐MatWerk Ontology (MWO), as a semantic foundation to standardize metadata, link distributed datasets, and support digital research data management (RDM) in MSE. MWO addresses the need for the structured, standardized, and semantically rich representation of key entities, processes, and resources involved in the generation, sharing, and reuse of MSE research data. Aligned with the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) , MWO develops as a modular extension of the NFDIcore ontology, and reuses Platform MaterialDigital core ontology (PMDco) MWO offers broad semantic coverage, modeling elements such as researchers, organizations, projects, software, workflows, datasets, metadata schemas, instruments, events, and services. It supports modular, scalable development through ontology design patterns (ODPs) and is maintained via the Ontology Development Kit (ODK) following best practices from the Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry. MWO also serves as the foundation for the MSE Knowledge Graph (MS‐KG), which integrates semantically interlinked research data across the NFDI‐MatWerk consortium and wider MSE community.