SKOS
Simple Knowledge Organization System
Situational
Formal standard
W3C
Since 2009
Judgement: Situational
Right when you actually have a taxonomy.
W3C standard for representing thesauri, taxonomies, and controlled vocabularies in RDF.
Useful for sharing classifications — PII categories, business glossaries, regulatory taxonomies — in a way that other tools can consume without bespoke mapping.
At a glance
- Category
- Semantics
- Governance
- W3C
- Status
- Stable since 2009
- First released
- 2009
Links
Related standards
Other standards in Semantics.
- DCAT — Data Catalog Vocabulary
- JSON-LD — JSON for Linking Data
- RDF/OWL — Resource Description Framework / Web Ontology Language
- SHACL — Shapes Constraint Language
- OSI — Open Semantic Interchange
- schema.org — schema.org vocabulary
- ShEx — Shape Expressions Language
See SKOS in context
Open the interactive Data Landscape to compare SKOS against every other open standard, or grab the raw JSON. Spotted something wrong? Open an issue.