ADR 0006: External vocabularies via SKOS crosswalks; MeSH as the concept vocabulary

Published

September 25, 2026

Context

The school’s own vocabularies (MEPOs, systems, disciplines, chief concerns, methods) need to line up with national frameworks and with any concept layer we add. Mappings made by hand or by a model are judgments, not facts.

Decision

  • Keep frameworks as CSVs in reference/, generated from the source documents where possible.
  • Keep mappings in reference/crosswalks/*.csv with SKOS relations (exact, close, broad, narrow, related, noMatch) and a basis column saying who made each mapping and how.
  • Use NLM MeSH, loaded locally from the official XML, as the concept vocabulary. UMLS/SNOMED waits until a licence and a need exist.
  • Don’t commit the copyrighted source PDFs. Record their URLs and checksums.

Consequences

Crosswalks are drafts until the curriculum office reviews them. “No MEPO maps to EPA 11” is presented as a mapping gap for discussion, not as a curriculum deficiency.