AstroPortal: An ontology repository concept for astronomy, astronautics and other space topics

Abstract: This paper describes a repository for ontologies of astronomy, astronautics, and other space-related topics. It may be called AstroPortal (or SpacePortal), AstroHub (or SpaceHub), etc. The creation of this repository will be applicable to academic, research and other data-intensive sectors. It is relevant for space sciences (including astronomy), Earth science, and astronautics (spaceflight), among other data-intensive disciplines. The repository should provide a centralized platform to search, review and create ontologies for astro-related topics. It thereby can decrease research time, while also providing a user-friendly means to study and compare knowledge organization systems or semantic resources of the target domains. With no apparent repository available on the target domain, this paper also expresses a novel concept.