Records in Contexts-Ontology (RiC-O) is an OWL (Web Ontology Language) ontology for describing archival record resources and their contextual entities. It is the third part of the Records in Contexts standard, which also includes Foundations of Archival Description (RiC-FAD), a Conceptual Model (RiC-CM) and Application Guidelines (RiC-AG). The versions 1.0 of RiC-FAD, RiC-CM, and RiC-O, that were released in late 2023, mark the first stable and complete version of the first three parts of RiC. In 2025 EGAD released the fourth and final part of RiC: Application Guidelines (RiC-AG).
RiC-O is a formal representation of RiC-CM.
RiC-O provides a generic vocabulary and formal rules for creating RDF datasets (or generating them from existing archival metadata) that describe in a consistent way any kind of archival record resource and its contextual entities and relationships. It is therefore a reference model for publishing archival metadata sets as Linked Data, querying them using SPARQL, and making inferences using the logic of the ontology.
The latest version of RiC-O, RiC-O 1.1, which is dated May 2025, can be downloaded, along with accompanying material, here: https://github.com/ICA-EGAD/RiC-O/releases/tag/v1.1.
RiC-O 1.1 is also accessible for humans (via an HTML representation, and for machines) via its IRI: https://www.ica.org/standards/RiC/ontology.
It is recommended that you use this version, which is fully compliant with RiC-CM 1.0, and is richer than the previous version, RiC-O 1.0.2, particularly as concerns record resources, instantiations and agents.
The release notes provide a list of changes made from RiC-O 1.0.2. Any person who has an account on GitHub can clone or fork the repository, create issues or create comments on the existing issues, and thus contribute to the development of RiC-O. There also is an information website about RiC-O: https://ica-egad.github.io/RiC-O/.