Document a SKOS taxonomy

RDF-file, local Git, remote Git, and SPARQL collectors retain SKOS assertions in the documentation KG with their normal source provenance. A taxonomy does not need an invented OWL ontology declaration. Register its skos:ConceptScheme as a vocabulary in a publication family and use the normal publication build-family workflow.

A standalone scheme supplies its title and namespace metadata, for example:

@prefix skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#> .
@prefix sh: <http://www.w3.org/ns/shacl#> .

<https://example.org/business> a skos:ConceptScheme ;
    skos:prefLabel "Business taxonomy"@en ;
    skos:definition "The business vocabulary maintained by this project."@en ;
    sh:declare [ sh:prefix "business" ;
                 sh:namespace "https://example.org/business/" ] .

<https://example.org/business/product> a skos:Concept ;
    skos:prefLabel "Product"@en ;
    skos:altLabel "Offering"@en ;
    skos:definition "An item offered to customers."@en ;
    skos:inScheme <https://example.org/business> .

Namespace metadata can also live in the publication definitions. Publication settings, authority, license, scope, and family registration work as they do for ontology publications. The existing command and JSON counters retain their ontology-oriented names when a selected vocabulary is a concept scheme.

Reference content

SKOS resources have Concept Schemes, Concepts, and Collections sections. Ordered collections retain their RDF member-list order. The standard ga:referenceSection hints can rename or reorder these sections using the kinds schemes, concepts, and collections.

English skos:prefLabel takes precedence over rdfs:label. Conflicting preferred labels fail documentation. Definitions, alternative and hidden labels, notations, notes, examples, hierarchy links, scheme membership, collections, and mappings remain source assertions in the KG. Reference entries show retained facts and link to other documented resources. Markdown descriptions use the same annotation support as ontology terms.

For a standalone scheme, term discovery reads the pinned collected-project snapshot, so concepts can be supplied in separate files. Explicit skos:inScheme, skos:topConceptOf, and skos:hasTopConcept links select typed resources even outside the declared namespace. Typed resources in the declared namespace are also documented. No membership, inverse links, hierarchy closure, or external imports are inferred.

SKOS schemes embedded in an OWL ontology are documented within that ontology's reference. A standalone source file currently supports one declared scheme; multiple standalone schemes in one file, overlapping selected vocabulary ownership, and ambiguous namespace declarations fail explicitly. Separate scheme declarations into distinct files and give each selected vocabulary unambiguous namespace metadata.

Publication formats

Taxonomies use the specification, paginated specification, and bookshelf renderers. A standalone scheme can form a book with its own PDF. Publication works from an exported and restored KG after deleting the original source files. This is vocabulary-reference documentation; it does not add a dedicated interactive taxonomy-tree renderer.