TheSoz: A SKOS Representation of the Thesaurus for the Social Sciences

TL;DR

This paper presents TheSoz, a SKOS-based Linked Dataset for social sciences thesaurus, enhancing information retrieval and linking datasets across domains using Semantic Web technologies.

Contribution

It details the conversion of TheSoz into SKOS format, including analysis, mapping, technical implementation, and integration with other datasets.

Findings

TheSoz is now accessible as a SKOS Linked Dataset.

Mappings to other datasets enable cross-domain linking.

The conversion process addresses modeling challenges and limitations.

Abstract

The Thesaurus for the Social Sciences (TheSoz) is a Linked Dataset in SKOS format, which serves as a crucial instrument for information retrieval based on e.g. document indexing or search term recommendation. Thesauri and similar controlled vocabularies build a linking bridge for other datasets from the Linked Open Data cloud - even between different domains. The information and knowledge, which is exposed by such links, can be processed by Semantic Web applications. In this article the conversion process of the TheSoz to SKOS is described including the analysis of the original dataset and its structure, the mapping to adequate SKOS classes and properties, and the technical conversion. Furthermore mappings to other datasets and the appliance of the TheSoz are presented. Finally, limitations and modeling issues encountered during the creation process are discussed.