The BCIO has been developed using established principles of good practice when developing ontologies. These are:

1. Ensuring that it can be linked with other ontologies that are relevant to behaviour as far as possible,
2. Re-using entities from other ontologies where possible,
3. Ensuring that definitions follow good practice,
4. Built using consultation with the field with a view to establishing a consensus as far as possible
5. Evaluated in practice (e.g., by assessing how far users can reliably annotate papers using the entities).