Authoring SSSOM mappings¶

This page documents the conventions used when hand-authoring mapping rows under mappings/*.csv.

skos:broadMatch / skos:narrowMatch direction¶

To assert that one concept is broader in meaning (i.e. more general) than another, use skos:broadMatch. Use skos:narrowMatch to assert the inverse: that one concept is narrower in meaning (i.e. more specific) than another.

For example:

ex:animals rdf:type skos:Concept;
  skos:prefLabel "animals"@en;
  skos:narrowMatch ex:mammals.
ex:mammals rdf:type skos:Concept;
  skos:prefLabel "mammals"@en;
  skos:broadMatch ex:animals.

For historic reasons, the name of the skos:broadMatch property does not provide an explicit indication of its direction. Read "broadMatch" here as "has broader concept": the subject of a skos:broadMatch statement is the more specific concept, and its object is the more generic one.

As is often the case in a knowledge organization system (KOS), a SKOS concept can be attached to several broader concepts at the same time. For example, a concept ex:dog could have both ex:mammals and ex:domesticatedAnimals as broader concepts.

Prefer broadMatch, narrowMatch and exactMatch over relatedMatch.