Concepts are defined by a label in natural language. It is equivalent to the word “Term” used in thesauri termination. SKOS provides three properties to attach labels to a concept:
- skos:prefLabel Preferred Label is a SKOS element that makes it possible to assign one unique preferred label to a resource.
- skos:altLabel Alternate Label makes it possible to assign an alternative, unauthorized lexical label to a concept. For example, synonyms, abbreviations, acronyms ect
- skos:hiddenLabel Hidden Label is a label for a resource accessible to applications performing text indexing and search operations, but not visible to the user. Hidden labels may for instance be used to include misspelled variants of other lexical labels.
Figure: Graphical representation of SKOS equivalence relations
