2016-06-27 Editorial Advisory Group Conference Call

The meeting was called to order at 11:05 am PDT. Keith Campbell sent apologies due to a standing conflict with this time. We will consider an alternate time for future meetings.

• Approve minutes from 4/4/2016
• Approve minutes from 4/19/2016

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dDkltmgyHBExu36X2i635Cl0m1yI3l8OZ9tQHqnMkMs/edit

If agreed, need to develop communication plan and schedule the work over the next several editing cycles.

Summary of previous discussion: (see 2016-01-22 Editorial AG Conference Call)

• Current FSN naming conventions result in "non-user-friendly" descriptions. Creation of another description without the semantic tag adds no value
• Many existing FSNs would be ambiguous without the addition of the semantic tag.
• Users often do not request "preferred terms" so rely on editors to provide appropriate descriptions.
• Historically, many FSNs were glorified preferred terms
• This is an issue that only affects English versions as translation provide terms of use in their languages
• Challenge to editors is when to create a different preferred term if the FSN term is not user-friendly.
• This has an impact on acceptance of word order variants as preferred terms.

Assumptions:

• Semantic tags provide value in disambiguating concepts in different hierarchies with the same description (e.g Swab (physical object) vs. Swab (specimen))
• Current FSN naming conventions do not always provide user friendly descriptions, so duplication of these descriptions adds no value.

Space Actions

Not addressed at this meeting due to time constraints

We are meeting for a full day in New Zealand. Need substantive topics to move forward.

• Solicit additional agenda topics for Face-to-face meeting

JCA is traveling or on leave from July 18 - Aug 6

It was suggested that we consider having two calls in August. EAG members were asked to provide comments on the feasibility of this on the meeting page.