skosnarrowMatch

skos:narrowMatch is a property within the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) standard. It is used to indicate a hierarchical relationship between two concepts where one concept is a narrower type of the other. Specifically, skos:narrowMatch signifies that a concept is a narrower term of another concept, but they are not necessarily identical. This is distinct from skos:narrower, which implies a direct subsumption relationship within the same thesaurus or knowledge organization system.

The skos:narrowMatch property is typically employed when linking concepts from different, but related, terminologies or classification schemes. For instance, if concept A in one system is a narrower type of concept B in another system, skos:narrowMatch could be used to express this relationship. This allows for the interlinking of disparate vocabularies, facilitating data integration and interoperability.

Unlike skos:exactMatch, which indicates that two concepts are equivalent, or skos:closeMatch, which suggests a close but not necessarily exact equivalence, skos:narrowMatch explicitly states that one concept is subordinate to another. This property helps in building more nuanced connections between concepts across different knowledge bases, enabling richer semantic web applications and more sophisticated information retrieval. Its use promotes a more granular understanding of hierarchical relationships when bridging different classification systems.