About versioning ontologies or any digital objects with clear semantics

International audience; The article discusses the process of versioning for ontologies and semantic artefacts developed using Semantic Web technologies. We describe methods for encoding versioning and other relevant information in metadata properties and we illustrate with examples from the MOD2.0 specification. Building on our experiences with the AgroPortal ontology repository and the Linked Open Vocabulary, we raise several questions, such as which metadata properties to use, how metadata values should be coordinated, and what stay the same over versions, and what should change. We propose recommendations for better versioning ontologies with clear semantics-identifiers, descriptions, status, dates, links-and suggests that the recommendations can be generalized to any digital objects that need to be versioned and semantically described.