A term is defined with a form for its kind — class, property or individual — from the vocabulary's page. The form asks for a short name, which becomes the last part of the term's URI under the vocabulary's namespace, a label, a definition, and whatever is specific to the kind, such as the classes a new class falls under. The nanopublication records that the term belongs to the vocabulary.

A term can refer to terms of other vocabularies, on the network or elsewhere, wherever a relation to an existing concept is what is meant, rather than a new definition.