 Copyright 2007 Digital Enterprise Research Institute. All rights reserved. Digital Enterprise Research Institute Research publication & enabling technologies for improved communication: Semantic Publishing and the Semantic Desktop Prof. Stefan Decker

Digital Enterprise Research Institute 2 of 31 Mission DERI Galway’s Mission is “to exploit semantics for – People – Organisations – Systems to collaborate and interoperate on a global scale” Computers People Physical World

Digital Enterprise Research Institute 3 of 31  “An extension of the current Web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.” – Sir Tim Berners-Lee et al., Scientific American, 2001: tinyurl.com/i59p What is the Semantic Web?

Digital Enterprise Research Institute 4 of 31 The Semantic Web: Interlinked Data from Distributed Sources

Digital Enterprise Research Institute 5 of Years of Academic Publishing… And we are still doing it in the same way??? Authors write narratives which need to be read and understood Published as paper … only the transfer is electronic [de Waard, 2006]

Digital Enterprise Research Institute 6 of 31 As linear Text – with references [de Waard]

Digital Enterprise Research Institute 7 of 31 Can we afford to continue this way?

Digital Enterprise Research Institute 8 of 31 Challenges: Scientific Publishing Find relevant literature Identify specific items (claims, justifications) Understand relations between (parts of) the publication and existing knowledge in the field

Digital Enterprise Research Institute 9 of 31 Scientific Publishing (cont.) Current approaches  Information extraction, data mining  E.g.: Google Scholar, CiteSeer, Medline …  Main draw-back: lack of interpreting the actual semantics of the text Bio-medical domain  Curators  Manual scan of scientific articles, population of domain-specific databases  Advantage: researchers can pose detailed queries on specific data (e.g. illnesses, symptoms, genes)  Main draw-back: enormous amount of literature to be formalized, serious delay of the knowledge transfer

Digital Enterprise Research Institute 10 of 31 Scientific Publishing (currently) Curators curation population Facts / Publication Database ? ? ? Publication repositories

Digital Enterprise Research Institute 11 of 31 Publishing is adding new Knowledge into a Knowledge Network! Claim A1 HasSubClaims SubClaim 2 SubClaim 1 supportedBy Experiment X1 Claim B1 …. supportedBy Paper A Paper B make it explicit!

Digital Enterprise Research Institute 12 of 31 Enter … Semantic Publishing Semantic Publishing = Semantic Web + Scientific Publishing Authoring process  Shifting the problem to the writing phase Publishing process  Creation of uniquely addressable knowledge elements  Interoperability

Digital Enterprise Research Institute 13 of 31 Semantic Publishing? ? ? Publication repositories Facts / Publication Database

Digital Enterprise Research Institute 14 of 31 Authoring and Publishing process Incremental  Creating a network of metadata and ideas Author-centred  Using the author’s knowledge to semantically enrich the publication during the writing process (and possibly even afterwards)  Knowledge elements ~ rhetorical blocks and claims Weaving the claim web  Publication reference at micro-level  Creation of Argumentation Discourse Networks  Explicit structuring of ideas and argumentation  Immediate reward

Digital Enterprise Research Institute 15 of 31 Publishing process (cont.) Example of decomposition into knowledge elements

Digital Enterprise Research Institute 16 of 31 Publishing process (cont.) Example of an Argumentation Discourse Network

Digital Enterprise Research Institute 17 of 31 SALT (Semantically Annotated LaTeX)   Early foundational framework Plan: Evaluation  Elsevier – Application of semantic publishing for scientific communication – Development of a new, semantic form for the scientific article  REMEDI – Application and validation of semantic publishing in the biomedical domain and research – Particular case study: Gene therapy Experimental Implementation

Digital Enterprise Research Institute 18 of 31 Target  Students and researchers open for experiments  New comers in the research field  Life science researchers … in general Advantages  Improve structuring and discourse argumentation in the process of scientific writing  Increase visibility in the scientific community It will happen anyway! Better we design it the way we want We do it … but will they come? Still: How to reduce the necessary work?

Digital Enterprise Research Institute 19 of 31 Going back…. Memex (Vannevar Bush) A memex is “a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications.” Open Hypertext System (Doug Engelbart) “The open hyperdocument system (OHS) is a standards-based, open source framework for developing collaborative, knowledge management applications.” WWW (Tim Berners-Lee) “There was a second part of the dream […] we could then use computers to help us analyse it, make sense of what we re doing, where we individually fit in, and how we can better work together.”

Digital Enterprise Research Institute 20 of 31 It wasn’t the time…

Digital Enterprise Research Institute 21 of 31 But now it is… Today necessary technologies & communities exist: Standardised metadata: Semantic Web Scalable distributed infrastructure: P2P Computing Knowledge articulation and interaction: Desktop/Wiki Technology Processing of unstructured and legacy information: NLP Human centric information exchange: Online Social Networks

Digital Enterprise Research Institute 22 of 31 Social Semantic Desktop Motivation  Personal data management is a general problem – not just for scientists  Data for publication has to come from some where – Notes – – Exchange idea Ideal:  Support collaboration with the creation, organisation, and exchange of information (beyond )

Digital Enterprise Research Institute 23 of 31 Social Semantic Desktop Realization Desktop: Help individuals in managing information on the Web / their PC Semantic: Make content available to automated processing Social: Enable exchange across individual boundaries

Digital Enterprise Research Institute 24 of 31 Social Semantic Desktop: Current status NEPOMUK Social Semantic Desktop Project  4 MNCs (IBM, HP, SAP, Thales), 3 SMEs, 8 Research Centres  Open source  Goals: Central per desktop meta data storage  Standard desktop ontologies  Semantic search on meta data  Linking of related data from different sources Prototype: NEPOMUK KDE  Part of the KDE 4 standard libraries: on every Linux system!  Great adoption from the Linux community

Digital Enterprise Research Institute 25 of 31 Semantic Publishing meets Social Semantic Desktop Symbiosis with bilateral implications  Semantic Desktop -> Semantic Publishing – Provides: a collection of documents and ideas + central metadata storage – Value: re-use of existing metadata during the authoring process and for creating new ideas  Semantic Publishing -> Semantic Desktop – Provides: new metadata and ideas – Value: improving search results + creating links between information elements based on the newly generated metadata

Digital Enterprise Research Institute 26 of 31 Conclusion Semantic Publishing  Improved information representation  Better information re-use  Improved research communication  Rich argumentation discourse networks – open & linked Social Semantic Desktop  Personal Information Management  Distributed Information Management  Social Network and Community Services  Standard Ontologies  Open Architecture Semantic Desktop + Semantic Publishing  Ideal platform for Research & Personal (including Social) Information Management

Digital Enterprise Research Institute 27 of 31 Contact information Contacts:  Prof. Dr. Stefan Decker  Dr. Siegfried Handschuh  Tudor Groza Links:     Stefan Decker, Martin Frank: The Social Semantic Desktop. (search Google for : Social Semantic Desktop)