Linked Data vocabularies are a crucial building block of the Semantic Data Web and semantic-aware data-value chains. Vocabularies reflect a consensus among experts in a certain application domain. They are thus implemented in collaboration of domain experts and knowledge engineers. Particularly the presence of domain experts with little technical background requires a low-threshold vocabulary engineering environment.

Inspired by agile software and content development methodologies, the VoCol methodology and tool environment addresses this requirement. VoCol is implemented without dependencies on complex software components, it provides collaborators with comprehensible feedback on syntax and semantics errors in a tight loop, and gives access to a human-readable presentation of the vocabulary. The VoCol environment is employing loose coupling of different components for syntax validation, documentation generation, visualization, etc. on top of a standard Git repository. All VoCol components, even the repository engine, can be exchanged with little effort.