Semantic Representation of Processes with Ontology Design Patterns

The representation of workflows and processes is essential in materials science engineering, where experimental and computational reproducibility depend on structured and semantically coherent process models. Although numerous ontologies have been developed for process modeling, they are often complex and challenging to reuse. Ontology Design Patterns (ODPs) offer modular and reusable modeling solutions to recurring problems; however, these patterns are frequently neither explicitly published nor documented in a manner accessible to domain experts. This study surveys ontologies relevant to scientific workflows and engineering process modeling and identifies implicit design patterns embedded within their structures. We evaluate the capacity of these ontologies to fulfill key requirements for process representation in materials science. Furthermore, we propose a baseline method for the automatic extraction of design patterns from existing ontologies and assess the approach against curated ground truth patterns. All resources associated with this work, including the extracted patterns and the extraction workflow, are made openly available in a public GitHub repository.