AN IMPROVED METHODOLOGY FOR SEMANTIC SCHEME QUALIFICATION Vicente Palacios 1 ), Jorge Morato 1 ), Sonia Sanchez-Cuadrado 1 ), Juan Llorens 1 ), Jose A. Moreiro 1 ) Abstract The semantics of vocabulary elements use to be defined locally with scarce rigorousness and without consideration to shared definitions in other vocabularies, this approach produces a lack in the interoperability between resources. This document provides metadata vocabularies with a semantic map, articulated by a new qualifier set. The qualifier set is named semantic qualifiers, which permits to use semantics included in public reference resources. Moreover, a methodology is proposed. The solution improves previous initiatives concerning metadata management like Metadata Registries or other DCMI proposals. As example, the Dublin Core semantic qualification is carried out, making use of W3C-WordNet as reference ontology. In addition, this approach considers Modularity, Extensibility, Refining and Plurilinguistic criteria. A descriptive document is proposed with two views, one aimed to the user and an additional in RDF. The fields that would get benefits from the proposal are conceptual recovery of elements in the Semantic Web, the use of application profiles, and the friendlier use of vocabularies. 1. Introduction The knowledge reuse discipline requests mechanisms in order to help identify semantics in concepts and guarantee the interoperability between models. This need is flagrant in areas like Semantic Web (SW), or even Domain Analysis in the Software Engineering field. As well as go on with Software Engineering Models, one of the major needs of SW is that documents must be structured and expressed in a reusable manner (it means not ambiguous, understandable, accessible and consensus). In this way, upcoming software applications could include and use in a standardized mode Web information coming from diverse sources. In order to insert the Web information, documents require to be delineated in base of elements with shared semantics and interoperable structures. This paper offers and carries out a methodology that makes possible the interoperability by adding a semantic layer and using a reference ontology. In the SW to guarantee the understanding and interoperability between diverse schemes requests the adoption of a coding language like XML, for example; and at least this two elements: First, a common and interoperable structure is normally expressed through schemas (for example, W3C XML schemas). Second, a 1 Computer Science Department, Carlos III University, Av. Universidad, 30, Leganés. 28911 Madrid. SPAIN. {vicente.palacios | jorgeluis.morato | sonia.sanchez.cuadrado | juan.llorens | joseantonio.moreiro}@uc3m.es SIIK 2006 MoMM2006 & iiWAS2006 Workshops Proceedings 313