Principles for Taxonomy - OpenEnergyPlatform/ontology GitHub Wiki

Principle of Single Inheritance

Strive to build the ontology monohierarchically, i.e. each term has at most one parent.

Bad example:

                         role
                        /    \
               socialRole    biologicalRole
                        \    /
                      motherRole

Good example:

                         role
                          |
                      motherRole
                        /    \
     biologicalMotherRole    adoptedMotherRole

Equivalent Classes

More than one hierarchy can be implemented using equivalent classes. See Explanation on mass nouns for an example.