We conducted a detailed comparative analysis of the structure of several thesauri in the field of environmental sciences (EnvThes, GEMET, OZCAR-Theia) with the aim of highlighting their limitations and complementarities. The criteria (both qualitative and quantitative) selected to compare these terminological resources are listed and evaluated so as to propose a guideline of best practices for the design and utilization of thesauri as open semantic repositories and thus ensure the interoperability of environmental research data. In order to promote the sharing and reuse of (meta)data, the vocabularies chosen to represent the domain knowledge must indeed conform to a set of principles and rules developed at the international level (ISO standards, FAIR principles, web of data recommendations, exchange formats). In addition to this study, we also made a comparison with six other thesauri in the topics of agronomy, ecology and biodiversity (Biodiversity Thesaurus, AGROVOC, GACS, EARTh, AnaEE-France and INRAE Thesaurus).