# PROV-O — W3C Provenance Ontology ## Overview PROV-O is a standard ontology from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for representing provenance, meaning the documented history of how a piece of data was created, by whom, using what process, and from which inputs. Published as a W3C Recommendation in 2013, it provides a minimal vocabulary for recording data lineage in a machine-readable, interoperable way. PROV-O is the formal foundation on which [[NIDM]] (Neuroimaging Data Model) is built: NIDM extends PROV-O with neuroscience-specific terms to track the full computational history of a neuroimaging analysis. ## Core Model Three fundamental classes: | Class | Description | Example | |---|---|---| | `prov:Entity` | A piece of data or a thing | An fMRI dataset, a statistical map | | `prov:Activity` | A process that used or generated entities | An fMRI preprocessing pipeline | | `prov:Agent` | A person, software, or organisation responsible | A researcher, FSL software | Key relationships: `wasGeneratedBy`, `used`, `wasAttributedTo`, `wasDerivedFrom`, `wasAssociatedWith` ## Neuroscience Use Cases [[NIDM]] extends PROV-O to describe neuroimaging experiments, results, and workflows with neuroscience-specific semantics. ## Connections - Governed by: W3C - Foundation for: [[NIDM]] (extends PROV-O for neuroimaging) ## Resources - https://www.w3.org/TR/prov-o/ - https://www.w3.org/TR/prov-primer/ (accessible introduction) - http://nidm.nidash.org (NIDM, built on PROV-O)