Evaluating approaches to automatically match thesauri from different domains for Linked Open Data

With the use of SKOS the heterogeneous environment of various vocabularies worldwide can be technically harmonized prospectively and especially the content of traditional databases can be made accessible and connectable for applications of the Semantic Web, i.e. as Linked Open Data. Vocabularies in SKOS format and respectively crosswalks between them can play a relevant role in this context, because they can serve as a bridging hub for the inter-linking of different published and indexed data sets. However, huge effort in developing and evaluating automatic alignment techniques have focused mostly on ontologies in recent years (see activities from the OAEI and van Hage 2008), with the demand that vocabularies in SKOS format would often have to be converted into OWL format.