{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,30]],"date-time":"2026-05-30T03:06:05Z","timestamp":1780110365234,"version":"3.54.0"},"reference-count":10,"publisher":"Springer Science and Business Media LLC","issue":"1","content-domain":{"domain":["link.springer.com"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["BMC Bioinformatics"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2007,12]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title>\n          <jats:sec>\n            <jats:title>Background<\/jats:title>\n            <jats:p>Biomedical ontologies are being widely used to annotate biological data in a computer-accessible, consistent and well-defined manner. However, due to their size and complexity, annotating data with appropriate terms from an ontology is often challenging for experts and non-experts alike, because there exist few tools that allow one to quickly find relevant ontology terms to easily populate a web form.<\/jats:p>\n          <\/jats:sec>\n          <jats:sec>\n            <jats:title>Results<\/jats:title>\n            <jats:p>We have produced a tool, OntologyWidget, which allows users to rapidly search for and browse ontology terms. OntologyWidget can easily be embedded in other web-based applications. OntologyWidget is written using AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and has two related elements. The first is a dynamic auto-complete ontology search feature. As a user enters characters into the search box, the appropriate ontology is queried remotely for terms that match the typed-in text, and the query results populate a drop-down list with all potential matches. Upon selection of a term from the list, the user can locate this term within a generic and dynamic ontology browser, which comprises the second element of the tool. The ontology browser shows the paths from a selected term to the root as well as parent\/child tree hierarchies. We have implemented web services at the Stanford Microarray Database (SMD), which provide the OntologyWidget with access to over 40 ontologies from the Open Biological Ontology (OBO) website [1]. Each ontology is updated weekly. Adopters of the OntologyWidget can either use SMD's web services, or elect to rely on their own. Deploying the OntologyWidget can be accomplished in three simple steps: (1) install Apache Tomcat [2] on one's web server, (2) download and install the OntologyWidget servlet stub that provides access to the SMD ontology web services, and (3) create an html (HyperText Markup Language) file that refers to the OntologyWidget using a simple, well-defined format.<\/jats:p>\n          <\/jats:sec>\n          <jats:sec>\n            <jats:title>Conclusion<\/jats:title>\n            <jats:p>We have developed OntologyWidget, an easy-to-use ontology search and display tool that can be used on any web page by creating a simple html description. OntologyWidget provides a rapid auto-complete search function paired with an interactive tree display. We have developed a web service layer that communicates between the web page interface and a database of ontology terms. We currently store 40 of the ontologies from the OBO website [1], as well as a several others. These ontologies are automatically updated on a weekly basis. OntologyWidget can be used in any web-based application to take advantage of the ontologies we provide via web services or any other ontology that is provided elsewhere in the correct format. The full source code for the JavaScript and description of the OntologyWidget is available from <jats:ext-link xmlns:xlink=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/1999\/xlink\" xlink:href=\"http:\/\/smd.stanford.edu\/ontologyWidget\/\" ext-link-type=\"uri\">http:\/\/smd.stanford.edu\/ontologyWidget\/<\/jats:ext-link>.<\/jats:p>\n          <\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1186\/1471-2105-8-338","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2007,9,14]],"date-time":"2007-09-14T06:13:21Z","timestamp":1189750401000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["OntologyWidget \u2013 a reusable, embeddable widget for easily locating ontology terms"],"prefix":"10.1186","volume":"8","author":[{"given":"Catherine C","family":"Beauheim","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Farrell","family":"Wymore","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Michael","family":"Nitzberg","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Zachariah K","family":"Zachariah","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Heng","family":"Jin","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"JH Pate","family":"Skene","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Catherine A","family":"Ball","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Gavin","family":"Sherlock","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2007,9,13]]},"reference":[{"key":"1710_CR1","unstructured":"The OBO Foundry[http:\/\/obo.sourceforge.net\/]"},{"key":"1710_CR2","unstructured":"Apache Tomcat[http:\/\/tomcat.apache.org\/]"},{"key":"1710_CR3","unstructured":"AMIGO Browser[http:\/\/www.godatabase.org\/cgi-bin\/amigo\/go.cgi]"},{"key":"1710_CR4","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"97","DOI":"10.1186\/1471-2105-7-97","volume":"7","author":"RG Cote","year":"2006","unstructured":"Cote RG, Jones P, Apweiler R, Hermjakob H: The Ontology Lookup Service, a lightweight cross-platform tool for controlled vocabulary queries. BMC Bioinformatics 2006, 7: 97. 10.1186\/1471-2105-7-97","journal-title":"BMC Bioinformatics"},{"issue":"7","key":"1710_CR5","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"866","DOI":"10.1093\/bioinformatics\/btl005","volume":"22","author":"PL Whetzel","year":"2006","unstructured":"Whetzel PL, Parkinson H, Causton HC, Fan L, Fostel J, Fragoso G, Game L, Heiskanen M, Morrison N, Rocca-Serra P, Sansone SA, Taylor C, White J, Stoeckert CJ Jr.: The MGED Ontology: a resource for semantics-based description of microarray experiments. Bioinformatics 2006, 22(7):866\u2013873. 10.1093\/bioinformatics\/btl005","journal-title":"Bioinformatics"},{"key":"1710_CR6","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"25","DOI":"10.1038\/75556","volume":"7","author":"M Ashburner","year":"2000","unstructured":"Ashburner M, Ball CA, Blake JA, Botstein D, Butler H, Cherry JM, Davis AP, Dolinski K, Dwight SS, Eppig JT, et al.: Gene ontology: tool for the unification of biology. The Gene Ontology Consortium. Nat Genet 2000, 7: 25\u201329.","journal-title":"Nat Genet"},{"key":"1710_CR7","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"D173","DOI":"10.1093\/nar\/gkj158","volume":"34","author":"DL Wheeler","year":"2006","unstructured":"Wheeler DL, Barrett T, Benson DA, Bryant SH, Canese K, Chetvernin V, Church DM, DiCuccio M, Edgar R, Federhen S, et al.: Database resources of the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Nucleic Acids Res 2006, 34: D173\u2013180. 10.1093\/nar\/gkj158","journal-title":"Nucleic Acids Res"},{"key":"1710_CR8","unstructured":"Ontology Widget website[http:\/\/smd.stanford.edu\/ontologyWidget]"},{"key":"1710_CR9","unstructured":"Yahoo!: Yahoo! UI Library (YUI).[http:\/\/developer.yahoo.com\/yui\/]"},{"key":"1710_CR10","unstructured":"NIH Neuroscience Microarray Consortium[http:\/\/arrayconsortium.tgen.org\/]"}],"container-title":["BMC Bioinformatics"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/content\/pdf\/10.1186\/1471-2105-8-338.pdf","content-type":"application\/pdf","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2021,9,1]],"date-time":"2021-09-01T10:26:58Z","timestamp":1630492018000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/bmcbioinformatics.biomedcentral.com\/articles\/10.1186\/1471-2105-8-338"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2007,9,13]]},"references-count":10,"journal-issue":{"issue":"1","published-print":{"date-parts":[[2007,12]]}},"alternative-id":["1710"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1186\/1471-2105-8-338","relation":{},"ISSN":["1471-2105"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1471-2105","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2007,9,13]]},"assertion":[{"value":"30 April 2007","order":1,"name":"received","label":"Received","group":{"name":"ArticleHistory","label":"Article History"}},{"value":"13 September 2007","order":2,"name":"accepted","label":"Accepted","group":{"name":"ArticleHistory","label":"Article History"}},{"value":"13 September 2007","order":3,"name":"first_online","label":"First Online","group":{"name":"ArticleHistory","label":"Article History"}}],"article-number":"338"}}