Role
Represents additional information about a relationship or property. For example a Role can be used to say that a 'member' role linking some SportsTeam to a player occurred during a particular time period. Or that a Person's 'actor' role in a Movie was for some particular characterName. Such properties can be attached to a Role entity, which is then associated with the main entities using ordinary properties like 'member' or 'actor'.
See also blog post.
- Kind of
- Intangible
- Properties
- 4 of its own14 more from Thing
- Subtypes
- Link
Role , OrganizationRole and PerformanceRole 4 counting theirs - Source
- Schema.org 30.1
Role in the .org.ai superset
A different thing with the same name. In data written with the .org.ai superset, Role means this; Schema.org's Role, above, is named by its full address, https://schema.org/Role.
A job role definition: a named position/function with required skills, responsibilities, permissions, tool grants, delegation/approval/escalation edges, and a preferred worker type (agent or human). NATIVE and SHADOWS per the ADR 0002 R3 bucket ruling: schema.org/Role is a reified edge-qualifier — a different concept sharing the name. The context term Role maps here; schema.org's Role stays reachable by full IRI.
- Shadows
- Schema.org's RoleA different thing that shares the name
- Source
- The .org.ai superset
Properties
4 of its own, and 14 it inherits. Each says what kind of value it takes.
| Property | Value | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| end | Value: Date or Date | The end date and time of the item (in ISO 8601 date format). |
| named | Value: Text or URL | Superseded by role A position played, performed or filled by a person or organization, as part of an organization. For example, an athlete in a SportsTeam might play in the position named 'Quarterback'. |
| role | Value: Text or URL | A role played, performed or filled by a person or organization. For example, the team of creators for a comic book might fill the roles named 'inker', 'penciller', and 'letterer'; or an athlete in a SportsTeam might play in the position named 'Quarterback'. |
| start | Value: Date or Date | The start date and time of the item (in ISO 8601 date format). |
| Property | Value | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| additional | Value: Text or URL | An additional type for the item, typically used for adding more specific types from external vocabularies in microdata syntax. This is a relationship between something and a class that the thing is in. Typically the value is a URI-identified RDF class, and in this case corresponds to the use of rdf:type in RDF. Text values can be used sparingly, for cases where useful information can be added without their being an appropriate schema to reference. In the case of text values, the class label should follow the schema.org style guide. |
| alternate | Value: Text | An alias for the item. |
| description | Value: Text or Text | A description of the item. |
| digital.org.ai | Value: Number | Digital maturity score from 0.0 (fully analog/manual) to 1.0 (fully digital/autonomous). Indicates the degree to which an entity operates digitally. |
| disambiguating | Value: Text | A sub property of description. A short description of the item used to disambiguate from other, similar items. Information from other properties (in particular, name) may be necessary for the description to be useful for disambiguation. |
| identifier | Value: Property | The identifier property represents any kind of identifier for any kind of Thing, such as ISBNs, GTIN codes, UUIDs etc. Schema.org provides dedicated properties for representing many of these, either as textual strings or as URL (URI) links. See background notes for more details. |
| image | Value: Image | An image of the item. This can be a URL or a fully described ImageObject. |
| main | Value: Creative | Indicates a page (or other CreativeWork) for which this thing is the main entity being described. See background notes for details. |
| name | Value: Text | The name of the item. |
| owner | Value: Organization or Person | A person or organization who owns this Thing. |
| potential | Value: Action | Indicates a potential Action, which describes an idealized action in which this thing would play an 'object' role. |
| same | Value: URL | URL of a reference Web page that unambiguously indicates the item's identity. E.g. the URL of the item's Wikipedia page, Wikidata entry, or official website. |
| subject | Value: Creative | A CreativeWork or Event about this Thing. |
| url | Value: URL | URL of the item. |
Subtypes
3 more specific kinds of Role, 4 counting their own subtypes.
- Link
Role A Role that represents a Web link, e.g. as expressed via the 'url' property. - Organization
Role1 subtype A subclass of Role used to describe roles within organizations. - Performance
Role A PerformanceRole is a Role that some entity places with regard to a theatrical performance, e.g. in a Movie, TVSeries etc.
Where this comes from
Quoted from Schema.org, and credited. Nothing in this definition is written by us.
- Published bySchema.orgschema.org/Role
- ReleaseVersion 30.116 September 2026
- LicenseCC BY-SA 3.0Free to copy and adapt, with credit, under the same licence
- Changed by usNothing.
Use this type
Its definition is free to reuse, with credit to Schema.org. The same type is here as data, for programs and for language models.
Partner with us
Fund the next pass, contribute data, or build on the record. Tell us what you have in mind.
Partner with us