Tags, Terms and Labels

Taxonomies of terms are used for organizing content. Taxonomies are a set of 'Vocabularies' which can contain 'Terms'. Because of their impact on finding and accessing items on the site, creating and modifying taxonomies can only be done by Site and Group Administrators. However, the description of this process is helpful for all Portal users. Users posting content to the portal should tag content with relevant terms.

SEARCHING BY TERMS

Terms associated with content can be found below the content as clickable links. The example below is a file in the SURE group tagged with a series of terms created within that group. The term "Evaluation and experimentation" is highlighted as the mouse hovers over the link. Clicking on this link will take you to a page listing all the materials tagged with that term.

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DEFINING VOCABULARIES AND TAXONOMIES

The following are some principles defining vocabularies and taxonomies (more details can be found in the documentation of the DRUPAL Taxonomy Module):
  • Each vocabulary consists of a set of terms.
  • A site can have an unlimited number of vocabularies each containing an unlimited number of terms.
  • Within a taxonomy, terms can be ordered into hierarchies.
  • Vocabularies may be designated as Free tagging in which users creating new content don't have to classify it with terms from a "controlled vocabulary", previously defined. Instead users can freely define keywords, or "tags".
  • Vocabularies can be set to allow terms to define related terms. This function is similar to "See also" in a dictionary.
  • Vocabularies define whether users may attach only a single term to a content node or whether users may attach multiple terms to a content node.
At the start, taxonomies are living, changing entities. While their establishment and evolution is a trial and error process, the increasing size of content tagged with the terms of a taxonomy creates inertia against future changes.
 
The current organization of the CPS-VO Portal includes a set of site-wide vocabularies and Group-specific vocabularies. Site-wide vocabularies are visible for all Groups and can be used for labeling Group-specific content. Group-specific vocabularies can only be used for labeling content that are uploaded for the group.
 
Site-wide vocabularies currently include:
  • Topics – providing terms for major CPS domains and research areas
  •  Keywords – including free tags selected by users who uploaded content
  • CPS-Events – providing terms for finding CPS Events organized by year
  •  Document Type – categorizing CPS documents uploaded to the Portal
  •  Document Source – categorizing the source of content
The name of Group vocabularies are prefixed by the Group acronym followed by a colon. For example, the vocabulary ‘SoS: Topics’ refers to the ‘Topics’ vocabulary of the Science of Security group. A snapshot of the CPS Portal vocabulary list is shown in the left side, and the snapshot of the ‘Topics’ vocabulary is shown on the right side.
 
Figure 1: Taxonomy 1
 

Site-wide vocabularies (‘Topics’, ‘Keywords’, ‘CPS Events’, ‘Document Type’, ‘Document Source’) are generic and can be used for labeling content in all groups. Group vocabularies (E.g.  SoI: Topics; the ‘Topics vocabulary of the Science of Integration Group) are specific to individual groups (and there is no automatic protection against conflicting use of terms). It is recommended (but not enforced) that each Group sets up a ‘Topics’ vocabulary, which is the refinement of the Group’s topic area named in the site-wide ‘Topics’ vocabulary. For example, ‘SoI: Topics’ is a refinement of the Science of System Integration term in the site-wide ‘Topics’ vocabulary:

Figure 2: Taxonomy

The ‘CPS Events’ vocabulary has unique role among site-wide vocabularies. New CPS Events that can count on community-wide attention are listed as a new term in this vocabulary which is categorized by years. When content is created that belongs to CPS Events (such as a Calendar Event, Announcement, Call for Papers, or event related supplemental documents) its term can be used for labeling. The Year 2011 segment of the CPS Events vocabulary is shown below.

Figure 3: Taxonomy

If preferred, a Group can also create a Group Event vocabulary and use it for labeling group related events (not necessarily made public).

NOTE: In the files section of your group: Vocabularies are identified by an arrow icon. Terms are identified by a folder icon.