A short introduction to Simple Knowledge Organisation System (SKOS) - a W3C standard for representing taxonomies, thesuari, and other classification systems. Presented at the Semantic Web London meetup (April, 2017)
SKOS: Building taxonomies with minimum ontological commitment
1. SKOS:
Building taxonomies
with minimum ontological commitment
Szymon Klarman
http://klarman.synthasite.com
Grakn Labs
Semantic Web London Meetup
April 18, 2017
2. Simple Knowledge Organisation System
• W3C standard (2009)…
• …for sharing thesauri, taxonomies,
classification schemes and subject heading
systems…
• …using the Semantic Web data model RDF.
https://www.w3.org/TR/skos-reference/
3. Simple Knowledge Organisation System
Car
Motor vehicle
Motorcycle
"car" @en "automobile" @en "auto" @pl"samochod" @pl
skos:broader
Car washes
Services
skos:broaderskos:broader
skos:relatedMatch
Vehicles
skos:inScheme
Industry classification
skos:inScheme
skos:prefLabel skos:prefLabelskos:altLabel skos:altLabel
5. Ontological commitment & semantics
motor vehicle
a wheeled vehicle, powered by an internal combustion engine, that does
not operate on rails
car
a motor vehicle, typically with 4 wheels, able to carry a small number of
people
8. Ontological commitment & semantics
Car
Motor vehicle
myTeslaPhoto
subject
skos:broader
X skos:broader Y
=
„Y has a broader
meaning than X”
semantics = shared understanding
9. Ontological commitment & semantics
Domain: Real-world things
Questions:
-What are they?
-What are they like?
Semantics: Set-theoretic
OWL/RDFS ontologies
Domain: Information resources
(and concepts).
Question: What are they about?
Semantics: No formal semantics.
Integrity constraints imposed by
the data model specs.
SKOS taxonomies
RDF data model
11. Concepts and labels
"car" @en "automobile" @en "auto" @pl"samochód" @pl
skos:prefLabel skos:prefLabelskos:altLabel skos:altLabel
skos:Concept
rdf:type
Car
"A motor vehicle, typically with 4 wheels, able to
carry a small number of people" @en
skos:definition
13. SKOS mappings
Car Motor car
skos:exactMatch
Vehicles
skos:inScheme
Road traffic vocabulary
Car (automatic)
skos:inScheme
skos:narrowMatch
skos:inScheme
skos:broadMatch
16. Integrity constraints (not consistent)
"car" @en
"automobile" @en
skos:prefLabel
Car
skos:prefLabel
"car" @en
skos:prefLabel
Car
skos:altLabel
17. Integrity constraints (not consistent)
Car
Motor vehicle
skos:broader
skos:related
Vehicle
skos:broader
Car Motor vehicle
skos:broader
skos:related
18. Integrity constraints (not consistent)
Car Motor car
skos:exactMatch
skos:broadMatch
Car Motor car
skos:exactMatch
skos:relatedMatch
19. SKOS + OWL/RDFS
Car
Motor vehicle
powered by some
Combustion engine
myCar
rdf:type
rdfs:subClassOf
rdfs:subClassOf
myCarPhoto
subject
skos:broader
skos:Concept
rdf:type
rdf:type
owl:Class
rdf:type
rdf:type
rdf:type
20. Curated SKOS taxonomies
-AGROVOC Multilingual agricultural thesaurus
http://aims.fao.org/vest-registry/vocabularies/agrovoc-multilingual-
agricultural-thesaurus
- STW Thesaurus for Economics
http://zbw.eu/stw/
-UK Public sector vocabularies
http://standards.esd.org.uk
-EUROVOC European Union multilingual thesaurus
http://eurovoc.europa.eu/
30. Summary
SKOS is an RDF-based standard for representing taxonomies, thesauri, etc.
•Conceptually simple with minimum ontological commitment:
•No complex formal semantics and logical implications
•Laverages NL semantics and facilitates sharing it
•Lower entry treshold for engaging experts/contributors/users
•Structurally simple:
•Easy to visualise and navigate
•Easy to exploit with graph-based algorithms
•Convenient bridge between structured and unstructured data.