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Knowledge Organization Systems for Systematic Chemical Assessments
BACKGROUND: Although the implementation of systematic review and evidence mapping methods stands to improve the transparency and accuracy of chemical assessments, they also accentuate the challenges that assessors face in ensuring they have located and included all the evidence that is relevant to e...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Environmental Health Perspectives
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7759237/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33356525 http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/EHP6994 |
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author | Whaley, Paul Edwards, Stephen W. Kraft, Andrew Nyhan, Kate Shapiro, Andrew Watford, Sean Wattam, Steve Wolffe, Taylor Angrish, Michelle |
author_facet | Whaley, Paul Edwards, Stephen W. Kraft, Andrew Nyhan, Kate Shapiro, Andrew Watford, Sean Wattam, Steve Wolffe, Taylor Angrish, Michelle |
author_sort | Whaley, Paul |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Although the implementation of systematic review and evidence mapping methods stands to improve the transparency and accuracy of chemical assessments, they also accentuate the challenges that assessors face in ensuring they have located and included all the evidence that is relevant to evaluating the potential health effects an exposure might be causing. This challenge of information retrieval can be characterized in terms of “semantic” and “conceptual” factors that render chemical assessments vulnerable to the streetlight effect. OBJECTIVES: This commentary presents how controlled vocabularies, thesauruses, and ontologies contribute to overcoming the streetlight effect in information retrieval, making up the key components of Knowledge Organization Systems (KOSs) that enable more systematic access to assessment-relevant information than is currently achievable. The concept of Adverse Outcome Pathways is used to illustrate what a general KOS for use in chemical assessment could look like. DISCUSSION: Ontologies are an underexploited element of effective knowledge organization in the environmental health sciences. Agreeing on and implementing ontologies in chemical assessment is a complex but tractable process with four fundamental steps. Successful implementation of ontologies would not only make currently fragmented information about health risks from chemical exposures vastly more accessible, it could ultimately enable computational methods for chemical assessment that can take advantage of the full richness of data described in natural language in primary studies. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP6994 |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7759237 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | Environmental Health Perspectives |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-77592372020-12-30 Knowledge Organization Systems for Systematic Chemical Assessments Whaley, Paul Edwards, Stephen W. Kraft, Andrew Nyhan, Kate Shapiro, Andrew Watford, Sean Wattam, Steve Wolffe, Taylor Angrish, Michelle Environ Health Perspect Commentary BACKGROUND: Although the implementation of systematic review and evidence mapping methods stands to improve the transparency and accuracy of chemical assessments, they also accentuate the challenges that assessors face in ensuring they have located and included all the evidence that is relevant to evaluating the potential health effects an exposure might be causing. This challenge of information retrieval can be characterized in terms of “semantic” and “conceptual” factors that render chemical assessments vulnerable to the streetlight effect. OBJECTIVES: This commentary presents how controlled vocabularies, thesauruses, and ontologies contribute to overcoming the streetlight effect in information retrieval, making up the key components of Knowledge Organization Systems (KOSs) that enable more systematic access to assessment-relevant information than is currently achievable. The concept of Adverse Outcome Pathways is used to illustrate what a general KOS for use in chemical assessment could look like. DISCUSSION: Ontologies are an underexploited element of effective knowledge organization in the environmental health sciences. Agreeing on and implementing ontologies in chemical assessment is a complex but tractable process with four fundamental steps. Successful implementation of ontologies would not only make currently fragmented information about health risks from chemical exposures vastly more accessible, it could ultimately enable computational methods for chemical assessment that can take advantage of the full richness of data described in natural language in primary studies. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP6994 Environmental Health Perspectives 2020-12-24 /pmc/articles/PMC7759237/ /pubmed/33356525 http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/EHP6994 Text en https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/about-ehp/license EHP is an open-access journal published with support from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health. All content is public domain unless otherwise noted. |
spellingShingle | Commentary Whaley, Paul Edwards, Stephen W. Kraft, Andrew Nyhan, Kate Shapiro, Andrew Watford, Sean Wattam, Steve Wolffe, Taylor Angrish, Michelle Knowledge Organization Systems for Systematic Chemical Assessments |
title | Knowledge Organization Systems for Systematic Chemical Assessments |
title_full | Knowledge Organization Systems for Systematic Chemical Assessments |
title_fullStr | Knowledge Organization Systems for Systematic Chemical Assessments |
title_full_unstemmed | Knowledge Organization Systems for Systematic Chemical Assessments |
title_short | Knowledge Organization Systems for Systematic Chemical Assessments |
title_sort | knowledge organization systems for systematic chemical assessments |
topic | Commentary |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7759237/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33356525 http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/EHP6994 |
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