Define high level observing, sampling, and collecting processes

[ramonawalls]

These terms will go into OBI (see obi-ontology/obi#969), but will be used extensively in BCO, so I would like to reach some consensus among this group before proposing the definitions to OBI.

The proposed (and I think mostly accepted) OBI hierarchy will be:

assay -specimen collecting process (input material entity, output material entity) --material sampling process (outputs a physical specimen that is representative of larger population) -observing process (input material entity, output data) --observing process based on sampling (input material entity, output data that is intended to be representative of a larger population) --other kinds of observing processes

We will then import these classes into BCO and make subclasses specific for biodiversity, ecology, evolution, etc. (i.e., non-biomedicine).

Assay and specimen collecting process have been discussed extensively, and their definitions are stable and useful to many researchers, so I don't want to change those.

The terms that need clearer definitions are: -material sampling process -observing process -observing process based on sampling

I suggest that we use STATO statistical sampling process (http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/STATO_0000502) -- a planned process which aims at assembling a population of observation units (samples) in as an unbiaised manner as possible in order to obtain or infer information about the actual population these samples have been drawn -- to help define material sampling process and observing process based on observation.

I will post strawman definitions for discussion in the comments.