Born in the early 1980's as a multilingual agricultural thesaurus, AGROVOC has steadily evolved over the last fifteen years, moving to an electronic version around the year 2000, and embracing the Semantic Web shortly thereafter. Today AGROVOC is a SKOS-XL concept scheme published as Linked Open Data, containing links (as well as backlinks) and references to many other Linked Datasets in the LOD cloud. In this paper we provide a brief historical summary of AGROVOC and detail its specification as a Linked Dataset.

Abstract:The AGROVOC multilingual thesaurus maintained by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations is now published as linked data. In order to reach this goal AGROVOC was expressed in Simple Knowledge Organisation System (SKOS) and its concepts provided with dereferenceable URIs. AGROVOC is now aligned with ten other multilingual Knowledge Organisation Systems (KOS) related to agriculture, using the SKOS properties exact match and close match. Alignments were automatically produced in Eclipse using a customdesigned tool and then validated by a domain expert. The resulting data is publicly available to both humans and machines using a SPARQL endpoint together with a modifi ed version of Pubby, a lightweight front-end tool for publishing linked data. This paper describes the process that led to the current linked data AGROVOC and discusses current and future applications and directions. This paper extends a shorter version presented at MTSR 2011.

Correct and reliable linkage of independently produced information is a requirement to enable sophisticated applications and processing workflows. These can ultimately help address the challenges posed by complex systems (such as socio-ecological systems), whose many components can only be described through independently developed data and model products. We discuss the first outcomes of an investigation in the conceptual and methodological aspects of semantic annotation of data and models, aimed to enable a high standard of interoperability of information. The results, operationalized in the context of a long-term, active, large-scale project on ecosystem services assessment, include:A definition of interoperability based on semantics and scale; A conceptual foundation for the phenomenology underlying scientific observations, aimed to guide the practice of semantic annotation in domain communities; A dedicated language and software infrastructure that operationalizes the findings and allows practitioners to reap the benefits of data and model interoperability.The work presented is the first detailed description of almost a decade of work with communities active in socio-ecological system modeling. After defining the boundaries of possible interoperability based on the understanding of scale, we discuss examples of the practical use of the findings to obtain consistent, interoperable and machine-ready semantic specifications that can integrate semantics across diverse domains and disciplines.

Abstract. We introduce VocBench, an open source web application for editing thesauri complying with the SKOS and SKOS-XL standards. VocBench has a strong focus on collaboration, supported by workflow management for content validation and publication. Dedicated user roles provide a clean separation of competences, addressing different specificities ranging from management aspects to vertical competences on content editing, such as conceptualization versus terminology editing. Extensive support for scheme management allows editors to fully exploit the possibilities of the SKOS model, as well as to fulfill its integrity constraints. We discuss thoroughly the main features of VocBench, detail its architecture, and evaluate it under both a functional and user-appreciation ground, through a comparison with state-of-the-art and user questionnaires analysis, respectively. Finally, we provide insights on future developments.

Abstract. The most frequently used concepts from AGROVOC, CABT, and NALT -three major thesauri in the area of food and agriculture -have been merged into a Global Agricultural Concept Scheme, with 15,000 concepts and over 350,000 terms in 28 languages in its beta release of May 2016. This set of core concepts ("GACS Core") is seen as the first step towards a more comprehensive Global Agricultural Concept Scheme. In the context of a new Agrisemantics initiative, GACS is intended to serve as hub linking user-oriented thesauri with semantically more precise and specialized domain ontologies linked, in turn, to quantitative datasets. The goal is to improve the discoverability and semantic interoperability of agricultural information and data for the benefit of researchers, policy-makers, and farmers in support of innovative responses to the challenges of food security under conditions of climate change.