Guidance on how to use the IUPAC Gold Book as a canonical source for textual definitions in chemical ontologies

This whitepaper aims to provide guidance to improve standardization and quality of ontologies development and curation concerning term definitions. We outline an approach on how definitions of The IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology (colloquially known as the "Gold Book") could be applied as a definition source for scientific ontologies. It addresses domain experts and ontology developers equally. We summarize good practices on the writing of ontology in general and how these can be utilized by incorporating Gold Book definitions for writing Gold Book-based ontology definitions. Several examples are provided for such term definitions including recommendations on how to reference Gold Book definitions.