The OntoBESS 2021 Workshop took place on the 18th September 2021, alongside ICBO 2021 as part of the Bolzano Summer of Knowledge. The workshop was held as a hybrid event.
While the use of ontologies has become commonplace in the biomedical sciences, it has only recently started to take off within the social and behavioural sciences. Recent applications of ontologies within the social and behavioural sciences include the Human Behaviour Change Project and the Addiction Ontology (AddictO). Within the biomedical domain, the Ontology for Medically Related Social Entities is relevant. This workshop aims to provide a forum for the discussion of all aspects related to the use and development of ontologies for research in the social and behavioural sciences and for the description of social, behavioural and economic variables in biomedical research involving humans or in population studies. Specific topics that are of interest include representations of population and personal attributes, behavioural and socioeconomic attributes, measurement, research methods and formal descriptions of social research studies, relating social theory and ontologies, and the development of a shared mid-level ontology for the social and behavioural ontologies. We will invite contributions detailing any aspect of theory or applications of ontologies within the social and behavioural sciences. An important additional objective of the workshop will be to form a community of practice and exchange around the development of ontologies for the social and behavioural sciences. We also seek to identify opportunities for collaboration on shared technical infrastructures and platforms, as currently no platform or portal exists for sharing and re-use of ontologies specifically for this domain.
