NMDC guidelines for usage of available ontologies

[anastasiyaprymolenna]

What are the requirements for an ontology to be an approved source of reference for the NMDC? Does there have to be a certain amount of community acceptance? Or certain communities that will use this ontology? Is there a style guide to follow?

Currently there are terms for enzymes (https://github.com/microbiomedata/berkeley-schema-fy24/pull/97) like 'alphap' , and substance roles (https://github.com/microbiomedata/berkeley-schema-fy24/pull/100) (like derivatization agent, stabilizer, precipitating agent, etc.) that cannot be found from only using the ontologies available in prefixes: on the nmdc.yaml

I am curious to how we expand the list of acceptable ontologies in a methodical manner. Would other ontologies listed on the OLS be acceptable candidates? What about ontologies like ChemFOnt that are published but are still being taken up by databases to be used (currently only implemented in HMDB)? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9825615/

@brynnz22 @turbomam @cmungall