STW - what's new?

See also Versions.

Version 9.18

STW Content

• Version 9.18 contains numerous new descriptors on topics that have recently emerged. These include, for example, the acronym VUCA and the descriptor Eco-economic decoupling. For the first time new descriptors have been included, which were proposed with the help of language models. Also included are new descriptors resulting from the project The WBdigital Database: A Digital Repository for the Historical DIW-Wochenbericht, 1928–1968.
• Detailed reports about the changes in the STW are provided by the Linked Data based change reports.

Linked Data

• In SKOS (STW download file and embedded RDFa), quasi-synonyms continued be differentiated specifically. In addition to skos:altLabel, quasi-synonyms that are actually narrower are labeled using zbwext:altLabelNarrower. Quasi-synonyms that can actually be considered related are labeled using zbwext:altLabelRelated. Quasi-synonyms that are not displayed are labeled using skos:hiddenLabel. In case a descriptor has quasi-synonyms, these are displayed under “also used for”.

Version 9.16

STW Content

• Version 9.16 contains numerous new descriptors on topics that have recently emerged. These include the descriptors Sustainable finance, Onshoring and Metaverse. Furthermore, the new version contains a large number of additional German and English synonyms that improve topic search.
• Detailed reports about the changes in the STW are provided by the Linked Data based change reports.

Linked Data

• The mapping of the STW descriptors to the items of the collaborative knowledge base Wikidata was extended to subthesaurus V (Economics) and N (Related subject areas) and covers the complete STW now. The links to STW in Wikidata via the "STW ID" property are complemented by additional links from STW.
• In SKOS (STW download file and embedded RDFa), quasisynonyms were differentiated specifically. In addition to skos:altLabel, quasi-synonyms that are actually narrower are labeled using zbwext:altLabelNarrower. Quasi-synonyms that can actually be considered related are labeled using zbwext:altLabelRelated. Quasi-synonyms that are not displayed are labeled using skos:hiddenLabel.
• The mapping to DBpedia has been replaced completely. The links were derived from the English Wikipedia site links in Wikidata.
• The mapping of the STW descriptors to the WKD German labor law thesaurus has been removed.

Version 9.14

STW Content

• Version 9.14 contains numerous new descriptors on topics that have recently emerged. These include the descriptors Climate neutrality, Linkage effect and Sector coupling. Furthermore, the new version contains a large number of additional German and English synonyms that improve topic search.
• Detailed reports about the changes in the STW are provided by the Linked Data based change reports.

Linked Data

• The mapping of the STW descriptors to the items of the collaborative knowledge base Wikidata has been extended. It now includes the subthesaurus B (Business economics).

Version 9.12

STW Content

• Version 9.12 contains new descriptors for subject areas that have recently become established as well as numerous additional German and, above all, English synonyms. Numerous stock indices that were previously grouped together have now been created as individual descriptors.
• Detailed reports about the changes in the STW are provided by the Linked Data based change reports.
• The STW is now published under a CC-BY 4.0 licence.

Linked Data

• The mapping of the STW descriptors to the items of the collaborative knowledge base Wikidata has been extended. It now includes the subthesaurus P (Products).
• Now available are aggregated lists of all new and deprecated descriptors and categories since the first publication of the STW on the web (2009), based on skos history.

Version 9.10

STW Content

• Version 9.10 contains new descriptors to topics, which have become more recently established, as well as numerous additional synonyms in German and in English. The subject areas of financial analysis and capital market models have been more differentiated.
• Detailed reports about the changes in the STW are provided by the Linked Data based change reports.

Version 9.08

STW Content

• Version 9.08 contains new descriptors to topics, which have become more recently established, as well as numerous additional synonyms in German and in English. Numerous German-language synonyms have been proposed by the Swiss Economic Archive.
• Detailed reports about the changes in the STW are provided by the Linked Data based change reports.

Linked Data

• A mapping between the STW descriptors and the multilingual EuroVoc thesaurus has been added.
• The mapping of the STW descriptors to the items of the collaborative knowledge base Wikidata has been extended. It now includes the subthesaurus W (Economic sectors).

Version 9.06

STW Content

• On the one hand, version 9.06 contains new descriptors on topic areas we have witnessed an increase in research literature for already some time. These include "Industry 4.0", "Disruptive innovation" and "Financial technology". On the other hand, new descriptors have been added that have recently attracted particular interest, such as "Populism" and "Autonomous vehicle". In addition, the STW has been expanded by numerous synonyms which have mainly been added in its English version.
• Detailed reports about the changes in the STW are provided by the Linked Data based change reports. The traditional text-based change list is also available.

Linked Data

• A mapping between the STW descriptors and the items of the collaborative knowledge base Wikidata has been added. The mapping has been created and is completely maintained in Wikidata by the Wikidata user community, with a strong participation of the STW thesaurus team. For now, the mapping published here is restricted to the sub-thesaurus G (Geographic names).
• The Wikipedia links () within the sub-thesaurus G are now no more generated from DBpedia, but from Wikidata.
• On the occasion of the STW mapping a Wikidata property mapping relation type was introduced, which allows to qualify "external id" links with the SKOS mapping relations. (Example: Jugoslawien (1918-1992) in Wikidata is a "close match" to Yugoslavia (until 1990) in STW.)

Version 9.04

STW Content

• Version 9.04 contains only minor changes. A few descriptors, as for example Big data and Virtual currency were added. A range of in particular English synonyms have been included. Amongst others, Work-family conflict for the preferred term Work-life balance and the acronym FDI for the preferred term Foreign investment.
• Detailed reports about the changes in the STW are provided by the Linked Data based change reports. The traditional text-based change list is also available.

Linked Data

• A mapping between the STW subject categories and the JEL classification of the Journal of Economic Literature has been added, which had been created by ZBW experts using the alignment tool Amalgame.

User Interface

• The publicly available functions of ZBW's Econis catalog have been integrated into EconBiz. Therefore, the Econis icon on descriptor pages has been dropped, and also the seldomly used "list of interest" icon for collecting descriptors for an Econis search.

Version 9.02

STW Content

• Compared to new versions of the last few years, version 9.02 only contains minor changes.
• Among other things a few descriptors were added in the main subject group Geographic names and a range of German and English synonyms have been included. In the German version the female form was completed for all groups of persons. For descriptors, where different spelling variants are allowed, the reformed spelling was added as a synonym.
• Detailed reports about the changes in the STW are provided by the Linked Data based change reports. The traditional text-based change list is also available.

Linked Data

• A mapping to the SDMX Subject-Matter Domains Classification has been added, which had been created by ZBW experts on the basis of STW's subject categories using the alignment tool Amalgame.

Version 9.0

STW Content

• Version 9.0 completes the entire overhaul of the STW Thesaurus for Economics. This overhaul started with version 8.06.
• 60 descriptors were added in this version, and 27 descriptors were deprecated. The changes mainly concern the subthesauri Geographic names and Related subject areas.
• Detailed reports about the changes in STW are provided by the new Linked Data based change reports. The traditional text-based change list is also available.
• STW is now published under an Open Database License (ODbL) 1.0.
• To ask questions and to get in contact with other STW users, you can use the new stw-user mailing list.

User Interface

• The change reports have been extended to cover more change types and are integrated into the STW web site. They are precomputed from a database which includes all the different STW-versions based on linked data.
• The pages of outdated versions (all of them are still available online) are overlayed with a "watermark" stating the version number (example).
• For deprecated concepts, a link to the latest valid version is provided (example).

Linked Data

• A new, experimental "Concept history (RDF/Turtle)" link is provided on every concept page, which gives an overview over every change the concept has undergone since v 8.04 (example).
• Links to download raw data versions of the change reports are provided on the report pages (beta) (example).
• The new version history reporting facilities have been developed in the context of the skos-history project. A SPARQL endpoint with all published versions of STW and all differences between versions (deltas) is available, as well as the code of all queries used for the change reports.

Version 8.14

STW Content

• This version includes the completely revised main parts Business Economics (B), Economics (V) and Commodities (P).
• 227 descriptors were added in this version. Distribution overview:
  
• 342 descriptors were deprecated in this version. Distribution overview:
  
• Detailed reports about the changes in STW are provided by the new Linked Data based change reports, currently in beta.
• The traditional text-based change list is also available.
• Since this version STW is published under an Open Database License (ODbL) 1.0.

User Interface

• The new change reports make heavy use of functions provided by the YASGUI Javascript libraries, which among other things allow an interactive sorting and filtering of results.

Linked data

• The new reporting facilities result from the skos-history project. A SPARQL endpoint with all published versions of STW and all version deltas is available, as well as the code of all queries (see project pages).

Version 8.12

STW Content

• The subject areas Environmental and resource economics (V.12), Public economics (V.09), Monetary and financial economics (V.05), International economics (V.07), and Labour (V.13) have been extensively revised. International management (B.01.07) has been added as a new subject category.
• Details on changes
• A first result of the skos-history project mentioned below is a SPARQL-generated list of newly introduced descriptors, sorted by subject categories.

User Interface

• A mappings overview page to other thesauri and vocabularies is now available.

Linked data

• A mapping to the WKD German labour law thesaurus, created by Wolters Kluwer Deutschland and the Semantic Web Company, has been added.
• The mappings to GND, Thesoz and Agrovoc have been updated and/or adapted to more recent versions of the vocabularies; a major overhaul of the DBpedia mapping is still pending.
• With the integration of the current version of the GND mapping, an older bug which prevented the use of GND/SWD synonyms in the Web Services for Economics has been overcome.
• An experimental SPARQL endpoint with prior versions of STW is now available. It is part of ongoing work to make version histories of SKOS files prolific. For more information, see the skos-history project on GitHub.

Version 8.10

STW Content

• STW Thesaurus for Economics version 8.10 comprises mainly a revision of the subject area "information and communication", i.a. the ICT sector (W.19), media industries (W.29), information economics (V.02.06), and information technology (B.09; N.10.07).
• Details on changes

Linked Data

• SKOS as a standardized interchange format facilitates the development and application of tools for automated consistency checks of thesauri. The results of such checks are step by step integrated into STW. Thanks to the creators of Poolparty Checker, Christian Mader who published qSKOS, and Christophe Dupriez, who shared his experiences from loading STW into ASKOSI.
• The .xhtml files, which where labeled with the Internet Media Type "application/xhtml+xml" (conforming to RDFa 1.0), are discontinued, because they were hardly used.

Version 8.08

STW Content

• STW Thesaurus for Economics goes back to the 90ies of last century and has been updated on a regular basis. During the last decades, economics and the economic and financial systems evolved and new subject matters surfaced. This is why we are working on a complete relaunch of STW, beginning with subthesaurus Business Economics. The other subthesauri will be dealt with successively. Moreover, new complementary terms, that have not been part of STW so far, will be integrated during the relaunch process.
• The relaunch will be implemented step by step. In version 8.08 the topics Organizational Research and Human Resource Management have been revised fundamentally. (Details on changes)
• The subsequent version will comprise, among others, a revision of the subject area Information and Communication.

User interface

• Links to EconBiz for every descriptor
• Links to concepts from other datasets (mappings to SWD, TheSoz, Agrovoc, DBpedia)
• Improved search function feedback ("Not found", error messages)

Linked Data

• All datasets are self-describing now and contain statistical data
• The mapping datasets (see above) contain the mapping relations (skos:*Match) and beyond that skos:prefLabels from both datasets and dcterms:isPartOf (and skos:inScheme, if the dataset is a skos:ConceptScheme) statements
• Besides RDF/XML and Turtle, N-Triples is offered as download format

Version 8.06

STW Content

• 225 new descriptors
• new subject fields : G.07 Peoples and Geographic Adjectives ; G.07.01 Peoples and Ethnic Groups ; G.07.02 Geographic Adjectives and Languages
• numerous English terms improved and 320 added
• references from 4 extinct descriptors to still valid descriptors, e.g. from Real estate loan to Mortage
  (Details on changes)
• the new Wiki includes information on STW structure, descriptor grouping, concept formation, and usage. Beyond that, publications on STW topics are listed.

User interface

• a favorites list for descriptors (-Icon) now allows searching Econis with combinations of terms
• subject-field navigation has been improved (the tree representation can be opened - and stays open - clicking on -Icon)

Linked Data

• the Linked Data content can be displayed directly via "RDF/XML" or "RDF/Turtle" links
• complete thesaurus downloads are now possible using the Turtle format, which ist easier readable for human eyes
• the GBV (Common Library Network) record number (PPN) for descriptors has been added
• name and URI of the zbw-extensions vocabulary (formerly skos-extensions) have been changed
• a formal description of the data set has been added (according to voiD)