We propose a comprehensive DL keyword taxonomy to provide a clear and systematic picture of the diverse DL research landscape. Structured as a hierarchical framework, it organizes topics into a shared vocabulary for the community.

Initially proposed during the business meeting at DL 2026 in Lisbon, this taxonomy serves a dual purpose. For researchers, it offers a broader perspective on the field, helping them situate their own work within the larger DL ecosystem and recognize connections across subdisciplines. For DL Program Committee Chairs, it streamlines the assignment of submitted papers to coherent sessions.

We intend for this taxonomy to evolve with the community, adapting to new research directions while maintaining a structured overview of the field. For feedback and corrections, please contact Alisa Kovtunova.

DL Keyword Taxonomy

The OWL ontology

  • Foundations of description logics
    • decidability and complexity of reasoning
    • expressive power
    • novel inference problems
      • novel query type
    • inconsistency management
      • repairs
        • Data repairs
        • TBox repairs
      • prioritized KBs
      • error-tolerance reasoning
    • reasoning techniques
      • translation to other logics
    • modularisation
    • ontology extraction
    • unwanted consequences and missing entailment
      • repairs
        • Data repairs
        • TBox repairs
      • abductive reasoning
    • inductive reasoning
  • Extensions of description logics
    • closed-world reasoning
    • non-monotonic reasoning
      • defeasible reasoning
      • deontic reasoning
      • neighbourhood DL
      • multiperspective reasoning
    • numerical
      • concrete domains
      • probabilistic reasoning
      • epistemic reasoning
      • fuzzy reasoning
      • preferential reasoning
      • temporal reasoning
        • metric temporal DL
        • linear-time temporal DL
      • spatial reasoning
    • procedural knowledge
    • query answering
    • reasoning over dynamic information
  • Integration of description logics with other formalisms
    • object-oriented representation languages
    • database query languages
    • constraint-based programming
    • logic programming
    • rule-based systems
      • temporal existential rules
      • chase
    • planning
  • Applications and use areas of description logics
    • ontology engineering
    • ontology languages
    • databases
    • ontology-based data access
    • semi-structured data
    • graph-structured data
    • linked data
    • document management
    • Learning
      • Concept learning
      • Finite Characterization
    • explanations
      • natural language generation
        • Template-based
        • LLM Generated
      • explanations of entailment
        • proofs
        • justifications / pinpointing
        • fact relevance
      • explanations of non-entailment
        • counterexamples
        • abduction
    • Semantic Web
    • cloud computing
    • conceptual modeling
    • web services
    • business processes
    • practical experiences
      • case studies
      • feasibility studies
  • Systems and tools of all kinds around description logics
    • reasoners
    • ontology editors
    • ontology alignment
    • ontology extraction
    • other support for ontology development
    • database schema design
    • query rewriting
    • data integration
    • implementation and optimization techniques
    • experiments
      • benchmarking
      • user studies
    • modeling
    • visualization
    • ontology embeddings