About Us
The Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) is a small, upper level ontology that is designed for use in supporting information retrieval, analysis and integration in scientific and other domains. BFO is a genuine upper ontology. Thus it does not contain physical, chemical, biological or other terms which would properly fall within the coverage domains of the special sciences. BFO is used by more than 250 ontology-driven endeavors throughout the world.
- The BFO project was initiated in 2002 under the auspices of the project Forms of Life sponsored by the Volkswagen Foundation. The theory behind BFO was developed first by Barry Smith and Pierre Grenon and presented in a series of publications listed here.
- Since then major contributions to BFO have been made above all by Alan Ruttenberg, also by many others, including:
- ...and by more than a hundred other members of the BFO Discussion Group.
- To access BFO in Portuguese, click here.
Users
BFO Conformant Ontologies
ISO Standard
Tutorials
Learn More About BFO by Clicking Any Headings Below
Barry Smith's Youtube Channel
Contains a collection of BFO lectures and videos.
ISO/IEC 21838 Information technology — Top-level ontologies (TLO)
The International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission Standards for TLOs and documentation of BFO conformance.
BFO Textbook Published by MIT Press
An introduction to the field of applied ontology with examples derived particularly from biomedicine, covering theoretical components, design practices, and practical applications.
NCOR BFO Tutorial
The National Center for Ontological Research's BFO Overview. The NCOR Wiki is also full of useful resources.
OLS Ontology Search - BFO
The Ontology Lookup Service (OLS) is a repository for biomedical ontologies that aims to provide a single point of access to the latest ontology versions.
AberOWL BFO Page
AberOWL is a web-based ontology repository front end that facilitates SPARQL and DL querying without prior user configuration.
Recent Publications
Team
Learn more about the core BFO team.
Barry Smith
Director at National Center for Ontological Research (NCOR) and Professor of Philosophy, University at Buffalo
John Beverley
Assistant Professor at SUNY Buffalo
