VocBench as an open-source project

What is VocBench?

VocBench is a reusable open-source solution whose development is managed by the Publications Office of the European Union. VocBench is a web-based, multilingual, collaborative development platform for managing and sharing reference data and controlled lists of codes and terms used to organise information. Developed in a context neutral way as an open-source project, it can be deployed or further developed for any sector wanting to have authentic reference data/codes made available for information systems and human users.

It is the most mature OSS platform for advanced thesaurus management and the only existing system providing in a single offer combined support for OWL ontologies, SKOS(/XL) thesauri, Ontolex-lemon lexicons and generic RDF datasets: its full compliance with W3C standards makes it a perfect platform for the evolution of many organisations and authorities towards production and publication of Linked Open Data. Licensed under the BSD 3-clause, it provides a solution to centralise the management of controlled code and term lists used by your public administration to support interoperabilit

When is this solution for you?

When you need to manage words and phrases to index content and/or to retrieve content through browsing and searching, and to co-manage and share them.

What does VocBench offer you?

By using VocBench, you can:

• avoid common errors such as entering synonyms or spelling mistakes when filling in online forms
• facilitate internationalisation of user interfaces by providing multilingual labels
• ensure semantic interoperability when exchanging data between systems and applications
• foster the collaborative maintenance of reference data and controlled code and term lists and foster their re-use
• manage controlled vocabularies according to semantic web standards and linked open data principles

Get started

Get the latest code from the VocBench website.

Former versions of VocBench are available here.