#733 Change the output of assay: from 'information content entity' to 'data item'

[Yu Lin]

The suggestion of changing output of assay from 'information content entity' to 'data item' is the result of assay harmony task.

In total 181 OBI assay terms, 133 have logical definitions to fit the pattern of has_specified_output some ('x' and ('is about' some 'y'))

We investigated the distribution of x as follows:
[term, count, frequency]
information content entity, 15, 11.28%
measurement data item, 58, 43.61%
data item, 21, 15.79%
scalar measurement datum, 6,
age measurement datum, 1,
mass measurement datum 1
categorical measurement datum, 1,
sequence data, 21, 15.79%
DNA sequence data, 17, 12.78%

During the OBI weekly call on Jan. 5, 2015 (https://sourceforge.net/p/obi/mailman/obi-devel/?viewmonth=201501&viewday=5), it was agreed that the output data should change to more specific 'data item' instead of 'information content entity'.

The OBI assays that has 'information content entity' as output data are:

DNA methylation profiling assay
comet assay
hematology
histology
organism identification assay
real time reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction assay
reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction assay
ChIP assay
ChIP-chip assay
assay
Edman degradation
RNA sequencing
glucose tolerance test
ChIP-seq assay
DNA replication timing by sequencing assay

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Assay is one of the term using 'information content entity' as output data, since assay is
an important core term of OBI, we need to hear other developers opinion about making this
change.

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Thanks!

Asiyah

[James A. Overton]

We discussed this on the 2015-01-26 call. There have been no objections, so we should go and try making this change.

James says that this one should be tested more carefully than usual before release.