XwkOnt Standards Baseline¶
Status: Accepted baseline, in active use
Date: 2026-06-30
Purpose¶
This document converts standards-discovery research into explicit, traceable dispositions for XwkOnt. It is a planning baseline for information architecture work, not an implementation specification.
The baseline follows ADR-0001's reuse-before-introduce rule. Project-specific conventions are introduced only where the surveyed standards do not by themselves answer an XwkOnt governance or documentation need.
Disposition Vocabulary¶
- Adopt: Use the standard directly for the stated scope.
- Adapt: Use selected parts of the standard with documented XwkOnt constraints.
- Reference: Treat the standard as background or interoperability context, but do not make it a current project requirement.
- Defer: Make no current adoption decision; revisit at a named later milestone.
- Reject: Decide not to use the standard for the stated scope.
Standards Disposition Matrix¶
| Standard | Disposition | Scope for XwkOnt | Decision record |
|---|---|---|---|
| ISO/IEC 11179 | Adapt | Use selected registry concepts such as administered item, identifier, definition, designation, provenance, and registration/status as conceptual guidance for future metadata records; do not implement the full metamodel now. | ADR-0003 |
| Dublin Core / DCMI Terms | Adopt | Use selected DCMI terms as the baseline descriptive metadata vocabulary for references and future repository artifacts, including title, creator/contributor where known, publisher, identifier, source/relation, rights/license, and dates. | ADR-0003 |
| RDF | Adopt | Use RDF as the future graph data model for machine-readable crosswalk artifacts and semantic-web interoperability; no RDF artifact implementation is required immediately. | ADR-0004 |
| RDFS | Adapt | Use selected RDFS vocabulary for lightweight class, property, label, comment, domain/range, and subclass/subproperty descriptions when RDF vocabularies are defined; do not require a complete schema immediately. | ADR-0004 |
| OWL | Reference | Reference OWL for imported ontology semantics and for future constrained formalization decisions; do not adopt OWL as the default modeling layer for XwkOnt artifacts now. | ADR-0004 |
| SKOS | Adopt | Use SKOS as the baseline concept-scheme and mapping vocabulary for future concept-centric crosswalk artifacts, especially labels, notes, concept schemes, and mapping relationships. | ADR-0004 |
| SPDX | Adopt | Use SPDX identifiers and expressions for license metadata when a license is known; this does not choose the repository license. | ADR-0005 |
| CSL | Defer | Defer citation-rendering style decisions until publication workflow or bibliography tooling is designed. | This baseline |
| BibTeX | Reference | Reference BibTeX as an academic bibliography interchange format; do not make it the canonical metadata model. | This baseline |
| ISO 8601 | Adapt | Use a constrained ISO 8601 profile for dates and timestamps in project metadata: calendar dates as YYYY-MM-DD; timestamps as UTC date-times with Z when time of day is required. |
ADR-0006 |
| RFC 2119 / RFC 8174 | Adopt | Use BCP 14 normative keywords in normative project specifications and policies only when the RFC 8174 boilerplate is included and uppercase keywords are intentional. | ADR-0006 |
| MOF | Reference | Background for understanding ODM's meta-modeling foundation; XwkOnt uses no MOF-based tooling. | docs/evaluations/meta-ontology-standards-evaluation.md |
| ODM | Reference | Background only; XwkOnt authors Turtle directly rather than through a MOF/UML-based ontology metamodel. | docs/evaluations/meta-ontology-standards-evaluation.md |
| DOL | Reference | Related art for formally linking ontologies across logics; heavier formalization (OWL/Common Logic theory interpretation) than XwkOnt's current conservative RDF/RDFS/SKOS scope. | docs/evaluations/meta-ontology-standards-evaluation.md |
| Common Logic | Reference | Consistent with the existing OWL disposition in ADR-0004; XwkOnt does not adopt a formal logic layer. | docs/evaluations/meta-ontology-standards-evaluation.md |
| OMV | Defer | Revisit closed 2026-07-03: all 8 crosswalks and 16 reference records confirm DCMI-based fields plus prose are sufficient; no OMV-specific structured field has been needed. | docs/evaluations/meta-ontology-standards-evaluation.md |
| VoID | Reference | Relevant only if XwkOnt later produces multiple interlinked machine-readable datasets; explicitly deferred per the Information Architecture's machine-readable companion decision. | docs/evaluations/meta-ontology-standards-evaluation.md |
| SSSOM | Adapt | Use SSSOM's predicate_id and mapping_justification (SEMAPV) vocabulary for mapping assertions; retain XwkOnt's categorical confidence scale and human-readable Markdown records rather than SSSOM's numeric confidence or TSV serialization. |
ADR-0009 |
| ISO 1087 | Adapt | Use the concept/term/designation distinction as justification for "Concept" as XwkOnt's organizing unit, distinct from source-specific "Term"; do not implement the full terminology-management apparatus (term records, equivalence relations, terminography workflow). | ADR-0011 |
| DOI (ISO 26324) | Adopt | Use DOIs as the preferred Identifier or URL value in reference records for formally published literature, refining the DCMI identifier field already adopted in ADR-0003. |
ADR-0012 |
| Memento Protocol (RFC 7089) | Adapt | Use the underlying practice (timestamped, independently retrievable snapshots, e.g. Internet Archive Wayback Machine) for reference records without a DOI; do not implement Memento's TimeGate/TimeMap negotiation infrastructure. | ADR-0012 |
Adopted Standards¶
Dublin Core / DCMI Terms¶
XwkOnt adopts selected DCMI terms for baseline descriptive metadata. This adoption is scoped to metadata semantics, not to a required serialization. Which terms are mandatory, recommended, or optional for each artifact type is decided in the information architecture work (docs/INFORMATION_ARCHITECTURE.md).
RDF¶
XwkOnt adopts RDF as the future graph data model for machine-readable semantic artifacts. This gives the information architecture work a stable interoperability target while preserving freedom to design human-readable documentation first.
SKOS¶
XwkOnt adopts SKOS as the baseline vocabulary for concept schemes, labels, documentation notes, and mapping relationships. How SKOS concepts relate to repository pages, ontology references, and source-specific concept records is decided in the information architecture work (docs/INFORMATION_ARCHITECTURE.md).
SPDX¶
XwkOnt adopts SPDX identifiers and expressions for license metadata where license information is known. Unknown, unclear, or custom license cases must remain explicit and traceable rather than guessed.
RFC 2119 / RFC 8174¶
XwkOnt adopts BCP 14 requirement keywords for documents that intentionally define normative requirements. Informal roadmap, journal, and explanatory documents should avoid accidental uppercase normative keywords.
Adapted Standards¶
ISO/IEC 11179¶
XwkOnt adapts selected metadata-registry ideas from ISO/IEC 11179 rather than implementing the full standard. The adaptation is justified because XwkOnt needs traceable reference and concept records but does not yet need a complete metadata registry system.
RDFS¶
XwkOnt adapts selected RDFS vocabulary as a lightweight description layer for future RDF vocabularies. The adaptation is justified because RDFS is useful for basic vocabulary documentation, while a complete schema belongs to later implementation work.
ISO 8601¶
XwkOnt adapts ISO 8601 through a narrow project profile. Dates use YYYY-MM-DD; timestamps use UTC with Z when a time of day is needed. This avoids ambiguous local dates and overuse of rarely needed ISO 8601 extensions.
Referenced Standards¶
OWL¶
XwkOnt references OWL for understanding and potentially representing source ontologies with formal semantics. OWL is not currently adopted as XwkOnt's default modeling layer because the project must remain a neutral crosswalk and must not become a new foundational ontology.
BibTeX¶
XwkOnt references BibTeX for import/export and academic interoperability. It is not the canonical metadata model because the editorial policy requires provenance, access, license, and relation metadata that may exceed a simple BibTeX record.
Deferred Standards¶
CSL¶
CSL is deferred because citation rendering is downstream of canonical reference metadata. The information architecture work does not need CSL, but a later publication-workflow decision may revisit it.
Rejected Standards¶
No surveyed standard is rejected in this baseline.
Project-Specific Conventions Introduced¶
This baseline introduces one project-specific convention: the disposition vocabulary adopt, adapt, reference, defer, and reject. This convention is justified because the surveyed standards do not provide a shared decision taxonomy for repository standards governance, and the vocabulary is needed to make standards-adoption decisions explicit and traceable.
Deferred Questions¶
- Which DCMI terms are mandatory, recommended, or optional for each artifact type?
- How should ISO/IEC 11179-inspired status and identifier concepts appear in concept, reference, and mapping records?
- What URI/IRI policy should XwkOnt use for concepts, source ontology terms, mappings, and repository artifacts?
- What is the relationship between human-readable concept pages and future RDF/SKOS machine-readable artifacts?
- Which SKOS mapping properties are acceptable for initial crosswalks, and when is a richer mapping note required?
- When should OWL axioms be preserved, quoted, summarized, or represented in XwkOnt artifacts?
- How should unknown, mixed, or custom licenses be represented with SPDX
LicenseRefor explanatory metadata? - Should CSL be adopted for rendered bibliographies during later publication workflow?
- Should BibTeX import/export be supported, and if so, how is it reconciled with DCMI-based canonical metadata?