Vocabulary: http://www.ivoa.net/rdf/datalink/core Author: François Bonnarel Date: 2020-06-03 Supercedes: VEP-001 New Term: counterpart Action: Addition Label: Counterpart Description: Data products sharing the target of the experiment or observation that led to #this but of unrelated provenance. This could be observations of the same object in different wavelengths or along different axes (time, spectrum), but spectra of dust of common origin but obtained by different laboratories would be #counterparts as well. Used-in: Various SVO ConeSearch services (courtesy Carlos Rodrigo/SVO), for instance http://svo2.cab.inta-csic.es/vocats/catlib/dl.php?ID=Coma+T+102&from=cs Also, in the GAVO data center, there it is used to link repeated observations of a given field among each other. For instance: http://dc.g-vo.org/flare_survey/q/mdl/dlmeta?ID=ivo%3A//org.gavo.dc/%7E%3Fflare_survey/data/plates/ESO040_004362.fits Rationale: Astronomers often want to associate #this (astronomical objects, sources or datasets ) with dataproducts of other provenance (but sharing some common features with them). The purpose maybe for comparison, cross-corelation, multi-band interpration, follow-up of changes, checking simulations results versus observations. Examples of that are measurements in another band, images, cubes, spectra, timeseries of a source, same dataproduct type and location in physical space but at another time, etc. In discussions leading up to the VEP, several other terms have been investigated and found inadequate. #see-also was considered much too general, essentially applying to all datalink items; #followup did not match the intended concept, as the linked data products may be much older than #this; #cross-associated was considered in more detail and might be a contender; #is-observation-of did not quite fit because the #counterpart is not an observation of #this but something observed by #this.