Role-Based Minimal Relation Design Patterns for Interoperable Ontologies

<jats:p>Many domain ontologies address complex relational semantics using large numbers of domain-specific OWL object properties. Although convenient and often linguistically intuitive, this practice tends to obscure the underlying ontological structure, hinders interoperability, and may introduce unintended logical consequences under description logic semantics. This paper investigates how far specialized relational patterns grounded in process participation can be reconstructed from a small set of ontologically grounded primitives, namely a generic “participates in” relation, types of processes, and formally defined participant roles, rather than through primitive subproperties of “participates in”. Participant roles are formally defined as classes characterized by patterns of participation in processes and constrained by formal axioms. We introduce a set of recurring participant role patterns, including Agent, Patient, Instrument, Undergoer, and several temporal participation roles. These patterns emerged inductively during the reconstruction of relational scenarios in biomedical ontologies. The proposed approach is conceptually related to aspects of participation-based treatments of roles in current foundational ontologies but deliberately avoids introducing additional ontological constructs such as relators, qua-individuals, or descriptions. Instead, it investigates how much relational semantics can be reconstructed within standard Description Logic using participation relations and formally defined role classes. The resulting framework deliberately prioritizes simplicity, interoperability, maintainability, and compatibility with large operational ontologies over maximal ontological expressivity. The approach is applicable to relations whose semantics can be explained through participation in processes, whereas relations grounded in institutional, social, cognitive, or state-dependent contexts, as well as modal, probabilistic, and type-level relations, lie outside the intended scope as they require richer representational mechanisms. The resulting design pattern provides a practical method for improving semantic precision and interoperability in large description logic ontologies while remaining compatible with standard OWL reasoning.</jats:p>