The semantic measures library and toolkit: fast computation of semantic similarity and relatedness using biomedical ontologies

Abstract

The semantic measures library and toolkit are robust open-source and easy to use software solutions dedicated to semantic measures. They can be used for large-scale computations and analyses of semantic similarities between terms/concepts defined in terminologies and ontologies. The comparison of entities (e.g. genes) annotated by concepts is also supported. A large collection of measures is available. Not limited to a specific application context, the library and the toolkit can be used with various controlled vocabularies and ontology specifications (e.g. Open Biomedical Ontology, Resource Description Framework). The project targets both designers and practitioners of semantic measures providing a JAVA library, as well as a command-line tool that can be used on personal computers or computer clusters. Downloads, documentation, tutorials, evaluation and support are available at http://www.semantic-measures-library.org.