When deciding what ontologies to use in one’s research it is useful to consider the following criteria:

1.Do all their entities have a parent entity, all the way up to a foundational ontology such as BFO?

2.Do the definitions of the entities conform to good practice. See https://www.qeios.com/read/YGIF9B.2 for a list of criteria.

3.Do the entity IDs conform to the OWL standard which allows then to be directly imported and referenced using a URL?

4.Do they make appropriate use of entities in other ontologies rather than unnecessarily creating new ones?

5.Have they been developed in consultation with domain experts?

6.Are they being properly maintained and updated as required?