Publication & citation

Guidance for citing HiTOP Ontology and preserving provenance when publishing, reusing, or extending its artifacts.

Source · README.md / Citation · CONTRIBUTING.md

Citation

The repository includes a maintained CITATION.cff. Use the citation metadata and version information associated with the release or repository state used in your work:

@misc{hitop_ontology_2026,
  title  = {HiTOP Ontology},
  author = {{HiTOP Ontologies contributors}},
  year   = {<release year>},
  version = {<version used>},
  url    = {https://github.com/HiTOP-Ontologies/hitop-ontology}
}

Contributions

Individual contributor roles are maintained in ontology/contributions.rdf. The ontology header links to the persistent address http://purl.org/hitop/contributions using prov:has_provenance and a human-readable rdfs:seeAlso link. The dcterms:contributor entries reference the contributors’ ORCID identifiers. Separate local foaf:Person descriptions provide names without academic titles, alphabetically ordered by family name. Detailed roles are maintained in the separate record, combining CRediT, SCoRO project membership and financial support. The same record also describes separate development activities for all six factorizations; sharing the record does not assign every person to every artifact. Creator, publisher and rights holder use the same existing ORCID identifier; the person's name is also defined locally.

These links are metadata references, not owl:imports. Parsing or converting the local ontology does not retrieve the contribution record, PURL, ORCID or vocabulary documents. Names and the link label remain available without them.

PURL setup

The PURL administrator needs to configure this redirect after the contribution file has been pushed; the repository change does not register it automatically:

PURL	Redirect target	Purpose
http://purl.org/hitop/contributions	https://raw.githubusercontent.com/HiTOP-Ontologies/hitop-ontology/main/ontology/contributions.rdf	Current contribution record

Use a changeable redirect (for example HTTP 302) for the current record. Before freezing a release, create a version-specific PURL, for example http://purl.org/hitop/0.1.0/contributions, pointing to the raw contribution file at the exact commit containing the approved record. Set that versioned PURL in the release ontology and regenerate its formats. Keep the versioned redirect target fixed and archive the contribution record with the release. The unversioned PURL may continue to track the current record. Citation authorship remains a separate decision recorded in CITATION.cff.

Reuse

The repository is available under the MIT License. A citation records scholarly provenance; the license defines reuse permissions. Preserve version information when exporting ontology or factorization artifacts.

Publication home and institutional references

The canonical publication home is the independent HiTOP Ontology repository. Institutional websites or implementation repositories are references to the project's ecosystem; they are not alternative canonical copies.

Context	Link target	How it should be described
German Center for Mental Health (DZPG)	DZPG website	Research and application context for mental health; use a website link where no institutional source-code repository exists
Medical Informatics Initiative (MII)	official MII GitHub organization	Downstream interoperability and implementation context; replace or supplement the organization link with the exact extension-module repository when its stable public URL is known

These references do not imply that DZPG or MII owns, endorses, or jointly governs HiTOP Ontology. A more specific claim such as “used by” should link to the exact public implementation or specification that demonstrates that use.

Recommended cross-referencing pattern

1. Publish releases in the canonical repository and archive each stable release with a DOI-capable service such as Zenodo.
2. Cite the release DOI and version from papers, institutional project pages, and downstream implementation repositories.
3. Link back from this repository to the exact downstream module or specification under “Ecosystem and reuse”.
4. Record responsibility separately: contributors in CITATION.cff, funding in acknowledgements, and organizational affiliations only where confirmed.

This pattern keeps the software citable and discoverable while preserving the distinction between maintainership, funding, research context, and downstream reuse.

Contributing

Changes should keep clinical content, ontology artifacts, tooling, schemas, and documentation reviewable as separate concerns. Read CONTRIBUTING.md, add relevant tests, and run the documented validation gates before opening a pull request.