Collaborative Editing and Linking of Astronomy Vocabularies Using Semantic Mediawiki

The International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA) comprises 17 Virtual Observatory (VO) projects and facilitates the creation, coordination and collaboration of standards promoting the use and reuse of astronomical data archives. The Semantics working group in the IVOA has repurposed five existing vocabularies (modelled using SKOS), capturing concepts within specific areas of astronomy expertise and applications. A major task however, is to promote the uptake of these semantic representations within the Astronomy community, and further, to let astronomers model (and in turn create links from) their own custom vocabularies to use these existing definitions. In this paper we show how Semantic Mediawiki (SMW) can be used to support expert interaction in the lifecycle of vocabulary creation, linking, and maintenance.