OPAL - Ontology Portal for Astronomy Linked-data

Science clusters

ENVRI - Environmental Sciences
ESCAPE - Astronomy, Nuclear and Particle Physics

Summary

The OPAL project aims to advance the semantic infrastructure for astronomy by creating an ontology portal, as a centralised repository for vocabularies and ontologies. Astronomy has long benefited from the International Virtual Observatory Alliance - IVOA, which promotes data interoperability within the field. However, these vocabularies remain confined to the IVOA ecosystem, limiting their application in related disciplines, such as heliophysics and planetary sciences. The project, in collaboration with the OntoPortal Alliance, will expand the use of IVOA vocabularies across astronomy and neighbouring fields, enhancing data sharing, reuse, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Research domains:
Computer Science, Knowledge engineering, Astrophysics, Cosmology, Particle or Nuclear Physics, Earth and environmental sciences
Partner(s):
INRAE, OBS-PARIS

Challenge

Open Science Service, Main RI concerned, Cross-domain/Cross-RI

The astronomy community is recognised for its Virtual Observatory infrastructure - IVOA, which enables interoperability and, in turn, smooth data sharing and reuse within this ecosystem. A key piece of this interoperability framework is the development and maintenance of vocabularies, as managed by the Semantics Working Group of the IVOA. Thanks to, among others, the EU funded Europlanet and ESCAPE programs, IVOA vocabularies spread to neighbouring disciplines (such as planetary sciences, heliophysics and particle physics). However, these vocabularies are still siloed in the IVOA framework. 

Solution

The OPAL project aims to design and set up an ontology portal, as a centralised Semantic Artefact Catalogue (SAC) for astronomy. The project will partner with the OntoPortal Alliance to re-use and customise the OntoPortal SAC technology. An OntoPortal instance offers a rich description of the metadata of the artefacts, and various advanced ontology-based services, such as browsing, searching, visualising, computing metrics, annotating, recommending, assessing FAIRness, as well as receiving community feedback and change requests. OPAL will establish the OntoPortal instance for astronomy, which will collect vocabularies and other "semantic artefacts" (SA) from the areas in the ESCAPE Science Cluster, including the Earth’s near-space environment, the early Universe, space physics, planetary sciences, stars and exoplanets, the interstellar and intergalactic medium, galaxies, compact objects (e.g., pulsars), cosmic rays, cosmology, and particle physics.

Scientific Impact

By collating all the ESCAPE fields vocabularies and ontologies into a single portal, OPAL will enable semantic interoperability across various astronomy databases and applications. It will use common and coordinated FAIR assessment methodologies, and will improve data discoverability through consistent annotations. By enhancing the semantic infrastructure of astronomy, the ontology portal will thus enable researchers to discover and use data more efficiently through standardised vocabulary and ontology resources. The portal’s FAIR-compliant services will improve data discoverability and interoperability across various sub-disciplines within astronomy and related fields, supporting more comprehensive, interdisciplinary research.

Results

  • OntoPortal-Astro Release at https://ontoportal-astro.eu. Currently, this semantic artefact catalogue for astronomy contains 30 ontologies and 14 users.
  • User and Advisory Group creation: The UAG gathers key stakeholders and knowledgeable personalities from the various astronomy sub-communities, in order to assess the priorities and developments of the OntoPortal-Astro.

Publications

  • Baptiste Cecconi, Laura Debisschop, Sébastien Derrière, Mireille Louys, Carmen Corre, Nina Grau, Cl’ement Jonquet,
    OntoPortal-Astro, a semantic artefact catalogue for astronomy, Astronomy and Computing, Volume 53, 2025, 100991, ISSN 2213-1337, DOI, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ascom.2025.100991, https://hal.science/hal-05237630/
  • Jonquet, C. et al. (2026). Federated FAIR Semantic Artefacts Discovery and Search with OntoPortal Federation. In: Garijo, D., et al. The Semantic Web – ISWC 2025. ISWC 2025. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 16141. Springer, Cham., DOI, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-09530-5_25, https://hal.science/hal-05224287
  • Liza Fretel and Baptiste Cecconi and Laura Debisschop, Adaptive and Multi-Source Entity Matching for Name Standardization of Astronomical Observation Facilities, 2025, 2510.05744, arXiv, https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.05744
  • Aubin, S., Corre, C., Jonquet, C., Cabrera-Bosquet, L., Rosati, I., NESTOLA, E., Ramezani, P., Tykhonov, V., Flohr, P., Scharnhorst, A., Christelle, P., Alviset, G., Szabo, D., Cecconi, B., pichot, . christian ., Clastre, P., Seinturier, J., & Caminha Juaçaba Neto, R. (2025). FAIR IMPACT's D4.6 - Use case driven validation of semantic artefact exploitation within data repositories (V1.O). Zenodo, DOI, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14917164

Events

  • 11-12 September 2025 | French EOSC Tripartite 2025 meeting. Both B. Cecconi and C. Jonquet presented.
  • 2 November 2025 | Nara, Japan - 20th International Workshop on Ontology Matching (OM-2025), (L. Fretel & C. Jonquet)
  • 2-6 November 2025 | Nara, Japan - International Semantic Web Conference 2025 (Both L. Fretel and C. Jonquet presented).
  • 15-17 December 2025 | Observatoire de Paris, Paris, France - OPAL internal workshop
  • 25 December 2025 | online - 1st meeting User and Advisory Group
  • 14-21 January 2026 | Annecy, France - S³ School — Sustainable Scientific Software School (I. Bourouche)
  • 10-12 March 2026 | Seville, Spain - 2nd OSCARS Annual General Meeting (AGM) (C. Jonquet)
  • 21-25 September 2026 | Observatoire de Paris, Paris, France - 4th OntoPortal Workshop (organised event) - The OntoPortal workshop series is an annual community event organized within the framework of the OntoPortal Alliance, bringing together developers, data managers, ontology engineers, and domain experts to share experiences, present use cases, and discuss technical, governance, and sustainability aspects of OntoPortal-based semantic artefact catalogues. The workshops foster cross-domain collaboration, gather user feedback to guide platform evolution, and strengthen the international OntoPortal ecosystem supported by the Alliance (see https://ontoportal.org).

Other material

Keywords
Astronomy vocabularies and ontologies, Semantic Artefact Catalogue (SAC), IVOA (International Virtual Observatory Alliance), Semantic interoperability, FAIR principles, OntoPortal Alliance, Semantic Web technologies, Planetary sciences, Heliophysics
Project start date:
Project duration:
24 months

Principal investigator

Clement Jonquet and Baptiste Cecconi - PIs OPAL project
Clement Jonquet and Baptiste Cecconi
INRAE and OBS-PARIS
BIO

Dr. Clement Jonquet, PhD in Informatics, is senior researcher at INRAE. He has 16 years of experience in ontologies and semantic Web research applied to biomedicine and agronomy. He works on the design and development of ontology repositories as coordinator of the OntoPortal Alliance and he leads AgroPortal ontology repository for agri-food. 

Dr. Baptiste Cecconi, PhD in astrophysics, is a senior research scientist, with an astronomer position working at Observatoire de Paris-PSL since 2007. He chairs  the IVOA Semantics Working Group. 

QUOTE
"The OPAL project will create a unified semantic artefact catalogue for vocabularies and ontologie from planetary sciences to heliophysics and cosmology. It will advance open science in astronomy enabling better data semantic interoperability and fostering cross-disciplinary collaboration."
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