Local Sematics with Global Meaning

This is a presentation held at the HMC Conference 2026. The abstract: FAIRification is huge global innovation process. A major challenge is the steep learning curve for every new user especially, if it comes to actionalble semantics: Which globally vocablary or ontology do I use? How can I use it for my data? Essentially every new adopter, who has never collected a single semantic dataset before, is asked to do everything right from the first moment and select the right vocabulary. This however is which strictly speaking would alreadyrequire an overview. This talks tries to address this and other problems connected to the introduction of globally harmonized semantics, with a seamingly counterintuitive suggestion, built into the concept of ontology: Split the problem of selecting the vocabulary ontology for collecting and communicating metadata into two: Allow users to collect metadata using fine granualar locally defined terms, and to give them a meaning that can be translated into global and harmonized vocabularies later. Both task can be performed by creating simple RDFS and OWL statements. Semantic reasoners can do the actual translation. The short talk will provide several arguments for this proposal: It mimizes hurdles to get started with metadata, because only minial prior knowlege or decisions are required. It allows adopters to learn about the semantics in a safe local setting, before they need to select the best fitting ontology. It allows to express concepts not yet available in harmonized ontologies and to test new concepts early. It allows to represent the collected metadata in several even contradictory or not yet developed ontologies. It allows to define terms much more specific and concrete than global terms and thus be more concise and better taylored for the actual data needs. It makes the job of data stewards easier, due to a separation of problems and tasks.