Ontology

BCO

Biological Collections Ontology

An ontology to support the interoperability of biodiversity data, including data on museum collections, environmental/metagenomic samples, and ecological surveys.

biodiversitybiospecimendataplantearth sciencesecologyenvironmental materialessmetagenomics
D45

FAIR 47/48

Version 2021-11-14

Evaluated 26 Oct 2026

How scores work

Source & access

Homepagegithub.com DownloadCanonical file / PURL Browse in OLSEMBL-EBI Ontology Lookup ServiceBrowse in BioPortalNCBO BioPortalBrowse in OBO FoundryOBO Foundry registry

Portals & registries

SourceIDVersionClassesPropertiesIndividualsLoaded
OLS (EMBL-EBI)bco2021-11-142534726425 Oct 2026
TIB Terminology Servicebco2021-11-14252475647 Aug 2023
OBO Dashboardbco2021-11-1496——9 Dec 2025

Ontology IRI http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/bco.owl
Version IRI http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/bco/releases/2021-11-14/bco.owl

Languages en en-us

Imports from (14)
BFO CARO CHEBI CL ENVO GO IAO NCBITaxon OBI PCO PR RO SO UBERON

Reused by (1)
FOVT

Logical consistency
consistent · 0 unsatisfiable
OWL 2 DL
no
ROBOT report
6 errors · 5 warnings · 1 info
OBO principles
FP01FP02FP03FP04FP05FP06FP07FP08FP09FP11FP12FP16FP20
Axioms
725 · 75.64% entities reused

Also registered as
aberowl: BCO agroportal: BCO biodivportal: BCO bioportal: BCO fairsharing: FAIRsharing.8ktkqy obofoundry: bco ols: bco ontobee: BCO tib.ts: bco wikidata.entity: Q55118250

Automated evaluation

F Findable FAIR12/12
  • Persistent identifier (F1)purl.obolibrary.org+4
  • Indexed in services (F4)6: OLS, TIB, BioPortal, OBO Foundry, Bioregistry, FAIRsharing+5
  • Citable reference (F2)doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0089606+3
A Accessible FAIR12/12
  • Homepage reachableHTTP 200+3
  • Artefact retrievable over HTTP(S) (A1)download HTTP 200+6
  • Metadata persists in a registry (A2)OBO Foundry, Bioregistry+3
I Interoperable FAIR12/12
  • Formal machine-readable format (I1)OWL+5
  • Semantic-web IRIs (I2)OWL+3
  • References other vocabularies (I3)imports 14: bfo, caro, chebi, cl, envo, go, iao, ncbitaxon…+4
R Reusable FAIR11/12
  • Clear license (R1.1)CC0 1.0+5
  • Release provenance (R1.2)2021-11-14 (version IRI in the artefact)+4
  • Community standards (R1.3)OBO principles: 9/13 checks pass+2
Q Ontology consistency & quality14/20
  • Logical consistencyconsistent, 0 unsatisfiable classes (OBO Dashboard)+10
  • OWL 2 DL profileoutside OWL 2 DL0
  • Upper-ontology alignmentimports BFO+3
  • Standard relations (RO)imports RO+1
  • ROBOT report: no errors6 errors0
  • ROBOT report: warning density5 warnings / 96 classes = 0.050
  • Pitfall scan: no critical pitfallsno pitfall scan yet; ROBOT report has 6 errors0
M Maintenance0/16
  • Recency2021-11-15 → 59.3 months (older / unknown)0
  • Release cadence (12 months)0 releases (GitHub releases)0
U Community adoption3/16
  • Documented adopting projects0 projects0
  • Reused by other ontologies1: fovt+1
  • Community signalmax(stars 24 → 1, citations 127 → 2)+2
P Penalties (inactivity & inconsistency)-19
  • Time since last activity4.9 years → 4 × max(0, 4.9 − 1)-16
  • Inactive statusnot archived, legacy or inactive0
  • Consistencyconsistent, no unsatisfiable classes0
  • ROBOT report errors6 errors-3

FAIR subtotal 47/48 · earned 64/100 − 19 inactivity = 45/100 → grade D

Community adoption 0

No adopting projects documented yet.

Know a project that uses BCO? Suggest it.

History & changes 1 run

History starts with the first archived run; changes appear after the next evaluation.

RunScoreFAIRVersion evaluatedTermsSnapshot
26 Oct 2026, 03:31 UTC45 D472021-11-14253JSON

Provenance

Every fact on this page was fetched automatically. Each row shows where it came from and when. If a source fails, the last good value is kept and marked “carried forward”.

FactSourceRetrieved
Homepage link check (HTTP 200)github.com26 Oct 2026, 02:40 UTC
Repository link check (HTTP 200)github.com26 Oct 2026, 02:40 UTC
Download link check (HTTP 200)purl.obolibrary.org26 Oct 2026, 02:40 UTC
Artefact header (version IRI)raw.githubusercontent.com26 Oct 2026, 02:40 UTC
Git refs (commit 315f781, latest tag 2021-11-14)github.com26 Oct 2026, 02:40 UTC
GitHub repository statisticsapi.github.com26 Oct 2026, 02:40 UTC
OLS classes, imports, version & releaseebi.ac.uk26 Oct 2026, 02:40 UTC
OBO Foundry status, license & usagesobofoundry.org26 Oct 2026, 02:37 UTC
TIB Terminology Service metricsservice.tib.eu26 Oct 2026, 02:40 UTC
Bioregistry mappings, dependencies & reusebioregistry.io26 Oct 2026, 02:40 UTC
OBO Dashboard (checked 9 Dec 2025)dashboard.obofoundry.org26 Oct 2026, 02:37 UTC
Crossref citations (doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0089606)api.crossref.org26 Oct 2026, 02:40 UTC

Run 2026-10-26T02-37-38Z · evaluator v2.0.0 · rubric v3.4 · entry.json · run snapshot

How to cite