GMEOW Ontology — Blackcat Informatics® Inc.

The GMEOW ontology

GMEOW (the Global Metadata and Entity Ontology for the Web) is a reasoning-centric, OWL 2 DL, upper-ontology-grounded super-vocabulary. It unifies document metadata, entity descriptions, legal agreements, contacts, person-centric data, and now scientific observation and measurement; its Location, Observation and Quantity spine can describe anything from a contact card to a gene, a star or an n-dimensional mathematical object.

Its canonical IRI is https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow. Apache serves this HTML landing page, four canonical RDF serializations, reasoned closures, alignments, projection examples, flattened term exports, VoID/DCAT metadata, a JSON-LD context and the pyLODE term reference; WIDOCO docs are published when the source build provides them.

GMEOW 0.1.0

At a glance

Namespace	`https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/` (`gmeow:`)
Ontology IRI	`https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow`
Version	`0.1.0`
Logical profile	OWL 2 DL
Foundation	gUFO (a lightweight UFO), with a reference bridge to BFO 2020
License	CC BY 4.0 (vocabulary) · Apache-2.0 (tooling)
Publisher	Blackcat Informatics® Inc.
Source	Blackcat-Informatics/gmeow-ontology

What it adds

Statement-level provenance	GMEOW is RDF 1.2 / RDF-star-first: facts are attributed, confidence-weighted, time-scoped claims, downcast losslessly to OWL axiom annotations for reasoners.
Contested facts	Disputed facts coexist as standpoint-indexed claims; the model never collapses them to a preferred, ranked or latest value.
Identity and display safety	Names, address, pronouns, gender and orientation are reified as co-equal, self-asserted, contextual facts; there is no `primaryName` or `preferredGender`, and deadnames are suppressed from display rather than deleted.

Modules

The current stable foundation described by the README covers 37 modelled, aligned and reasoned modules; every class is grounded under a gUFO foundational category, with newer coverage for location, time, events, observation, quantities, data quality and cross-domain reference frames.

Group	Scope
Identity	`entities`, `names`, `gender`, `sexuality`, `languages` — self-asserted identity, naming, display safety, registry-independent language and script modelling.
Social & contact	`genealogy`, `organization`, `contacts`, `email`, `accounts` — relationships, organizations, online accounts, mailbox structure and contact channels.
Content & evidence	`documents`, `sources`, `software` — creative works, datasets, code, citations and source-backed claims.
Trust & crypto	`trust`, `messaging-trust` — keys, certifications, owner-trust, message authentication and cryptographic signatures.
Skills & legal	`expertise`, `agreements`, `rights` — skills, credentials, contracts, licences, ODRL-style permissions, prohibitions and duties.
Place, time & events	`places`, `temporal`, `events` — locations, time intervals, participation, life events and Location as a universal reference-frame spanning 13+ realms.
Epistemics & measurement	`provenance`, `standpoint`, `observation` — attributed claims, confidence, standpoint modality, contested facts, SOSA/SensorThings-style observation and QUDT quantities.
Cross-cutting foundations	`frame-relativity`, `determinacy`, `granularity`, `privacy`, `accessibility`, `aggregation`, `quality`, `attestation` — overlays and constraints shared across domains.

Alignments

GMEOW does not replace existing vocabularies — it aligns to them: SSSOM, EDOAL, FnO and SPARQL projection artifacts are generated from one mapping DSL, tying GMEOW terms to external standards so it can reason on its own yet interoperate with other datasets.

Alignment targets include: FOAF, schema.org, REL, DOAP, PROV-O, ORG, OntoLex-Lemon, BIO, vCard, BIBO, Wikidata, BFO, GeoNames.

Mappings are maintained as SSSOM tables (mappings/) and compiled into gmeow-alignments.ttl; cross-dataset owl:sameAs links live in gmeow-linksets.ttl.

Projection target	GMEOW exports
schema.org	Flat `Person`, `Organization` and `Place` contact-card surfaces.
FOAF	Lowest-common-denominator person/agent graph: names, homepages, mailboxes and knows links.
vCard RDF	Contact cards, addresses, URLs, geo facts and free-text `vcardx:pronouns`.
GeoSPARQL	Geometry literals and topology from `Place`/`Location` plus frame-relative coordinates.
iCalendar RDF / OWL-Time	Calendar events, instants, intervals and Allen temporal relations.
ODRL / CC REL / SPDX / Dublin Core Terms	Rights, licences, permissions, prohibitions, duties and metadata downcasts.
BOT / RDF Data Cube	Building topology and statistical observations from spatial aggregations.
OntoLex-Lemon / Web Annotation / standpoint profiles	Lexical entries, annotation body/target projections and frame-preserving contested-claim exports.

Alignment domain	Reference vocabularies
Foundational	gUFO, BFO 2020, DOLCE/SUMO planned.
Hub & coreference	Wikidata, schema.org, FOAF, ORG, PROV-O.
Identity & language	GSSO, Homosaurus, FHIR, OntoLex-Lemon, LIME, Glottolog, CEFR/ILR/ACTFL.
Geospatial & place	GeoSPARQL, CIDOC-CRM/CRMgeo, BOT/ifcOWL, LADM, INSPIRE, AIXM, UNCLOS, MRGID, OGC GeoPose and Moving Features.
Scientific & measurement	QUDT, SOSA/SSN, SensorThings, IVOA/UAT/SWEET, FALDO, Sequence Ontology, GFF3, IEEE 1872, OpenMath/MEX, W3C DQV and ISO 19157.
Rights, trust, privacy & finance	ODRL, CC REL, Dublin Core, SPDX, RightsStatements.org, PREMIS, WIPO, PROV-O, in-toto, SLSA, DSSE, Sigstore/Rekor, SCITT, nanopublications, DPV, SKOS, MOAT, RDF Data Cube and FIBO seed links.

Downloads

BII publishes the full GMEOW snapshot, not just the human-readable page. The four canonical RDF files live at the site root as content-negotiation targets for /gmeow; closures, alignments, projection examples, term exports, metadata, context, logo and reference docs live under /gmeow/.

URL	Type	Role
`/gmeow.ttl`	`text/turtle`	Canonical vocabulary in Turtle; the most readable RDF serialization.
`/gmeow.rdf`	`application/rdf+xml`	Canonical vocabulary as RDF/XML.
`/gmeow.nt`	`application/n-triples`	Canonical vocabulary as one triple per line for bulk load, diffing and streaming.
`/gmeow.jsonld`	`application/ld+json`	Canonical vocabulary as JSON-LD.
`/gmeow/context.jsonld`	`application/ld+json`	JSON-LD context for compact GMEOW terms.
`/gmeow/gmeow-vocab.ttl`	`text/turtle`	GMEOW terms only, without import closure.
`/gmeow/gmeow-full.ttl`	`text/turtle`	Vocabulary with the gUFO and module import closure.
`/gmeow/gmeow-merged.ttl`	`text/turtle`	Merged closure as a single graph.
`/gmeow/gmeow-reasoned-hermit.ttl`	`text/turtle`	HermiT-inferred release closure.
`/gmeow/gmeow-alignments.ttl`	`text/turtle`	Compiled SSSOM alignments to FOAF, REL, DOAP, PROV-O, ORG, schema.org, Wikidata and related vocabularies.
`/gmeow/gmeow-linksets.ttl`	`text/turtle`	Cross-dataset linksets.
`/gmeow/gmeow-classes.csv`	`text/csv`	Flattened class export.
`/gmeow/gmeow-properties.csv`	`text/csv`	Flattened property export.
`/gmeow/gmeow-individuals.csv`	`text/csv`	Flattened individual export.
`/gmeow/gmeow-terms.csvw.json`	`application/json`	CSVW metadata for the flattened term exports.
`/gmeow/gmeow-terms.jsonl`	`application/jsonl`	One JSON record per exported term.
`/gmeow/gmeow-terms.md`	`text/markdown`	Markdown term export.
`/gmeow/llms.txt`	`text/plain`	LLM-ingestable vocabulary bundle.
`/gmeow/crossref-deposit.xml`	`application/xml`	CrossRef DOI deposit XML generated by the release pipeline.
`/gmeow/gmeow-example-*.ttl`	`text/turtle`	Worked projection examples for schema.org, GeoSPARQL, vCard, FOAF, iCalendar, OWL-Time, ODRL, CC REL, Dublin Core Terms, SPDX, OntoLex-Lemon, Web Annotation and BOT.
`/gmeow/void.ttl`	`text/turtle`	VoID dataset description.
`/gmeow/dcat.ttl`	`text/turtle`	DCAT dataset and distribution metadata.
`/gmeow/reference.html`	`text/html`	pyLODE-generated class and property reference; term IRIs redirect to anchors here.
`/gmeow/gmeow-logo.svg`	`image/svg+xml`	GMEOW logo from the vendored ontology snapshot.
`/gmeow/VERSION`	`text/plain`	Snapshot `owl:versionInfo`.

Apache publication layout

BII's Apache config publishes /gmeow as a slash-namespace ontology IRI. Browsers receive this HTML page; clients asking for RDF media types receive 303 See Other to the matching serialization. The rules also set RDF media types, allow CORS on ontology artifacts, and mark the negotiable endpoint with Vary: Accept plus Cache-Control: private, no-store.

Request	Apache result
`GET /gmeow` with `Accept: text/html` or browser default	HTML landing page at `/gmeow/`.
`Accept: text/turtle` or `application/x-turtle`	`303` to `/gmeow.ttl`.
`Accept: application/rdf+xml`	`303` to `/gmeow.rdf`.
`Accept: application/n-triples`	`303` to `/gmeow.nt`.
`Accept: application/ld+json`	`303` to `/gmeow.jsonld`.
`GET /gmeow/Person` or another bare term IRI	`303` to `/gmeow/reference.html#Person`.

Reasoning & validation

GMEOW's logical TBox stays deliberately within OWL 2 DL, so decidable reasoners apply. The pipeline merges the import closure first, then runs OWL 2 DL profile checks, ELK consistency, release-grade HermiT closure, SHACL completeness shapes, entailment-based competency tests, and no-drift checks between the RDF 1.2 / RDF-star statement artifact and its OWL axiom-annotation downcast.

Full term reference

The class-by-class, property-by-property reference documentation (generated by pyLODE) is at /gmeow/reference.html. Each term IRI (e.g. …/gmeow/Person) dereferences to its anchor in that document. Source, contribution guide and release history live in the GitHub repository.