The BCIO has been developed using established principles of good practice when developing ontologies. These are:

1.Ensuring that it can be linked with other ontologies that are relevant to behaviour as far as possible.

2.Re-using entities from other ontologies where possible

3.Ensuring that definitions follow good practice as set out in, for example, https://www.qeios.com/read/YGIF9B.2

4.Built in consultation with the field with a view to establishing a consensus as far as possible

5.Evaluated in practice (e.g., by assessing how far users can reliably annotate papers using the entities)