about-OBO-Foundry.html

---
layout: doc
title: About the OBO Foundry
---

<h1>About the OBO Foundry</h1>

<p>
  The mission of the OBO Foundry is to develop a family of interoperable
  ontologies that are both logically well-formed and scientifically accurate. To
  achieve this, OBO Foundry participants follow and contribute to the
  development of an evolving set of
  <a href="/principles/fp-000-summary.html">principles</a> including
  <a href="/principles/fp-001-open.html">open use</a>,
  <a href="/principles/fp-010-collaboration.html">collaborative development</a>,
  <a href="/principles/fp-005-delineated-content.html"
    >non-overlapping and strictly-scoped content</a
  >, and common <a href="/principles/fp-002-format.html">syntax</a> and
  <a href="/principles/fp-007-relations.html">relations</a>, based on ontology
  models that work well, such as the
  <a target="_new" href="http://geneontology.org/">Gene Ontology (GO)</a>.
</p>

<p>
  The OBO Foundry is overseen by an
  <a href="http://obofoundry.org/docs/OperationsCommittee.html"
    >Operations Committee</a
  >
  with <a href="/docs/EditorialWG.html">Editorial</a>,
  <a href="/docs/TechnicalWG.html">Technical</a> and
  <a href="/docs/OutreachWG.html">Outreach</a> working groups.
</p>

<p>
  You can contribute to the OBO Foundry by submitting issues or pull requests to
  our GitHub repo,
  <a href="https://github.com/OBOFoundry/OBOFoundry.github.io"
    >OBOFoundry/OBOFoundry.github.io</a
  >, or by joining our mailing list
  <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/obo-discuss"
    >https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/obo-discuss</a
  >. If you'd like to submit your ontology for possible inclusion in the OBO
  Foundry, please follow the instructions
  <a href="http://www.obofoundry.org/faq/how-do-i-register-my-ontology.html"
    >here</a
  >.
</p>

<p>
  An overview of the OBO Foundry can be found in these publications:
  <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2814061/"
    >The OBO Foundry: coordinated evolution of ontologies to support biomedical
    data integration</a
  >
  and
  <a
    href="https://academic.oup.com/database/article/doi/10.1093/database/baab069/6410158"
    >OBO Foundry in 2021: operationalizing open data principles to evaluate
    ontologies</a
  >. See also this
  <a href="https://github.com/jamesaoverton/obo-tutorial">OBO tutorial</a>.
</p>