This in-person workshop draws on the long-standing contributions of the NKOS (Networked Knowledge Organization Systems) workshop series in advancing research in Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) and the pivotal role of the TPDL conference in shaping the digital libraries landscape.

The NKOS workshop series has, for over two decades, provided a dedicated forum for the international KOS research and practitioner community, exploring the potential of Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) in the context of current and emerging information landscapes and technological advances. It offers a space where KOS researchers and practitioners from different perspectives and interdisciplinary backgrounds can engage together.

Submission Guidelines

Proposals are invited for 20-minute presentations and demos or 60-minute panels on work related to the themes of the workshop. We welcome presentations, demos and panels related to themes, in-process projects, and ongoing work.

Workshop papers maximum 1000 words, including aims, methods, background, main findings, and relevance to themes of workshop

Papers developed from some earlier workshop presentations were published as special issues in journals such as Journal of Data and Information Science and Knowledge Organization. In case of interest, we shall aim for a special journal issue to host papers from the 2026 workshop.

List of Topics

The workshop has two primary themes as its main focus:

Theme 1: KOS Mappings and Alignment
Mappings (or alignment) between KOS is attracting increasing attention in the context of KOS as Linked Data and multilingual archives. This theme includes the use of generative AI as a tool for KOS mapping, exploring its methods, capabilities, and limitations through practical experience.

Theme 2: User Interaction with KOS in Retrieval
This theme addresses how users interact with KOS in information retrieval contexts, including semantic search, interface design, and the user-facing implications of KOS-powered systems.

Further presentations and demonstrations will be selected from the following additional topics:

• Automatic/AI KOS-based subject indexing, classification, and entity extraction
• KOS-based recommender systems
• Meaningful concept display and visualisation of KOS
• Semantic standards developments (including BSI, ISO, W3C SKOS, and related)
• Evaluation of KOS-based systems — methods and practical experience
• KOS in e-research and metadata contexts
• KOS and e-learning
• Use of KOS in generative AI applications — methods and practical experience

Committees

Programme Committee, Co-Chairs

• Andreas VLACHIDIS, University College London, UK
• Claudio GNOLI, University of Pavia, Italy
• Koraljka GOLUB, Linnaeus University, Sweden
• Joseph BUSCH, Taxonomy Strategies, USA
• Douglas TUDHOPE, University of South Wales, UK
• Marcia ZENG, Kent State University, USA

Program Committee, Members

• Mark BUTLER, University of California, Berkeley & OntoAI Inc., USA
• Antoine ISAAC, Europeana and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Vânia Mara Alves LIMA, University of São Paolo, Brazil
• Eva MENDEZ, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain
• Ziyoung PARK 朴志英, Hansung University, South Korea
• Jian QIN, Syracuse University, USA
• Armando STELLATO, University of Rome, Italy
• Joseph TENNIS, Information School, University of Washington, USA
• Marcin TRZMIELEWSKI, Paul Valéry University Montpellier 3, France

Venue

The NKOS@TPDL 2026 workshop will be held at the 30th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL 2026),

22–25 September 2026, in Faro, Portugal

Participation in in-person workshop will require registration; please consult the TPDL 2026 website for registration and cost information. After the workshop, copies the presentations will be made available on the NKOS website

Contact

All questions about submissions should be emailed to Andreas Vlachidis (a.vlachidis@ucl.ac.uk) and Claudio Gnoli (claudio.gnoli@unipv.it)