 A couple of weeks ago I added version 3 of the BU research ontology to the blog and asked for your advice as to whether this adequately reflected the breadth of your disciplines and expertise (see BU’s keywords for research – is everything included?). Thank you to everyone who responded to this – all of your comments and suggestions have been incorporated into version 4.
A couple of weeks ago I added version 3 of the BU research ontology to the blog and asked for your advice as to whether this adequately reflected the breadth of your disciplines and expertise (see BU’s keywords for research – is everything included?). Thank you to everyone who responded to this – all of your comments and suggestions have been incorporated into version 4.
Rather than using the rigid 3-level structure, Version 4 includes the first attempt of mapping the keywords to the four broad areas of:
- Business & Management
- Media & Culture
- Health & Society
- Science & Technology
These areas will then map to the 8 emerging BU research themes. The aim of this is to provide a more flexible ontology that is adaptable to the complexities of inter- and multi-disciplinary research and that can be used to make relationships between people and disciplines (and therefore news stories, projects, outputs, etc) internally and also via the new external research webpages.
You can access Version 4 here: Research ontology v4
We’re very interested in your feedback as to whether the mapping in Version 4 is fit for purpose or whether any changes need to be made. Please add your comments to this post by Friday 2 September 🙂
Thanks to Katarzyna Musial for her help in visualising how this could work.











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We have ‘Political Organisation’ and ‘Political Science’ but no ‘Political Communication’ which would actually describe one hub of research better. There also seems to be a gap around firstly media (Journalism, Media production), creative industries (Advertising) and also new media. Not sure how exhaustive we would want to be but offer these as additions or suggestions for changes.
Hi Darren,
Thanks for your comments. We have included ‘political communication’ in V4 – it’s on row 203. All of the media terms you mention and other appear in rows 152-176. Do these cover everything required?
Thanks
Julie
Please can you amend:
Psychology of e-learning – pls also add a cross in 4th column Human-computer interaction – pls also add a cross in 2nd column
Cyberpsychology – pls also add a cross in 2nd column
Thanks, Jacqui
Thanks, Jacqui. I’ve made these amendments to V4.
Thanks
Julie
Hi
In the health and social care section thanks for adding in the subjects I asked for. Physiology has been added but not Physiotherapy. I wondered if this was substituted by accident.
Thanks
Thanks, Kirsty. I’ve just added it in to V4.
Julie