FROM SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION TO PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE: THE SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE WEB PUBLISHED AS A KNOWLEDGE BASE ICCC 9th International Conference on electronic publishing

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FROM SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION TO PUBLIC
KNOWLEDGE THE SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE WEB PUBLISHED
AS A KNOWLEDGE BASEICCC 9th International
Conference on electronic publishing ElPub
2005Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

• Carlos H. Marcondes
• marcon_at_vm.uff.br 
• Information Science Department, Information
  Science Post-graduate Program, Universidade
  Federal Fluminense, Brazil

Research funded by CNPq the Brazilian Council
for the Development of Science and Technology
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PROBLEM

• The role of scientific journals in scientific
  communication
• The potentialities of IT has been applied to
  provide access to full-text documents
• The scientific communication process depends on
  text production, reading, interpretation and
  citation
• Web-published scientific journals are still based
  on the paper print publishing model

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QUESTIONS

• Can an author publish a scientific article both
  as a text and also in a machine readable format
  containing the new knowledge addressed by the
  article?
• How would the structure of the new knowledge
  contained in a scientific article be?
• What would be the consequences of this
  publication model to scientific communication and
  to the development of Science?

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ASSUMPTIONS

• Web publishing scientific articles can be new a
  cognitive tool
• Growing availability of scientific Web ontologies
• Science has a formal method of reasoning the
  Scientific Method
• Scientific articles have a highly structured text
  format
• The Semantic Web Initiative proposes machine
  readable documents that can be processed by
  software agents

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THE HYPOTHESIS

• The text of observational and experimental
  articles is usually (but not necessarily) divided
  into sections with the headings Introduction,
  Methods, Results, and Discussion. This so-called
  IMRAD structure is not simply an arbitrary
  publication format, but rather a direct
  reflection of the process of scientific
  discovery (http//www.icmje.org)
• Not only does the scientific article contain a
  formal text structure (named here assurface
  structure), but it also contains a deep
  structure, composed of the Scientific
  Methodology elements, such as facts, statement of
  the problem, methodology, assumptions, contextual
  conditions, hypotheses, results, conclusions and
  citations

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OBJECTIVE

• To propose a model of the deep structure of
  scientific articles
• This model will be the base to enhance authoring,
  validation and retrieval tools

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PROPOSED MODEL context / applications
A IMPOR Eas kjjsd dj sdk skdkl skls a fd g gfg
ggfgg g
Researcher/author
A IMPOR Eas kjjsd dj sdk skdkl skls a fd g gfg
ggfgg g
A IMPOR Eas kjjsd dj sdk skdkl skls a fd g gfg
ggfgg g
Authoring tool
Other scientific articles Web published
Semantic citations
A IMPOR Eas kjjsd dj sdk skdkl skls a fd g gfg
ggfgg g
Semantic relations
scientific article Web published - text
deep structure new knowledge
Public knowledge bae/Web (ex UMLS)
Reading, retrieval, validating, annotating tools
Researcher/referee/ reader
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Hypothetic-Deductive Method, based on Lakatos
Marconi (2004, p.75).
Previous knowledge Existing Theories
1
Gaps, contradictions, problems, new phenomena
Assumptions, solutions or hypotheses
Deductions, consequences
Testing techniques
Tests
2
Analysis of results
Evaluation of the hypotheses
Refusal
Ratification
New theory
New gaps, contradictions, problems
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Hypothetic-Deductive Method, based on Lakatos
Marconi, 2004, p.75.

• step 1- facts or, more precisely, problematic
  facts
• step 2- formalization of a research problem or
  question
• step 3 - development of a hypothesis, which is an
  (temporary) answer to the research problem
• step 4- empirical testing of the hypothesis
• step 5 - analysis of the test results
• step 6 - conclusion hypothesis ratification or
  refusal

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ltscientific_article_deep_structuregt ltfactgt...
lt/factgt ...
(new phenomena) ltproblemgt ... lt/problemgt
(question)
ltmethodgt ltmethodologygt ... lt/methodologygt
lt/methodgt ltassumptiongt ...
lt/assumptiongt lthypothesesgt
(provisory
answer) ltcontextual_conditiongt ... lt/
contextual_condition gt ... ltcausegt
... ltlink to knowledge basegt ... ltlink to
knowledge basegt lt/causegt ... ltconsequencegt
... ltlink to knowledge basegt ... ltlink to
knowledge basegt lt/consequencegt ...
lt/hypothesesgt ltresultgt ... lt/resultgt
... (data resulting of controlled
experiences or empirically collected also a
link to datasets of results)
ltconclusiongt ... (hypotheses
ratification or refusal) ltlink to knowledge
basegt ... ltlink to knowledge basegt
lt/conclusiongt ... ltcitationgt ltbibliographic_r
eferencegt ... lt/bibliographic_referencegt
ltlink to bibliographic referencegt ...
lt/link to bibliographic referencegt
ltreason_to_citegt ... lt/reason_to_citegt
lt/citationgt ... lt/scientific_article_
deep_structuregt
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RESEARCH DEVELOPMENT AGENDA

• Empirical research
• analyze scientific articles in Health Science to
  validate the model
• Theoretical research
• establish the relations between the different
  elements of the articles deep structure
• enhance the representation of the articles deep
  structure represent it as an ontology - RDF?,
  DAMLOIL?

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REMAINING QUESTIONS

• Is the deep structure common to all scientific
  areas?
• What kind of inferences can be made based on a
  scientific articles deep structure ?
• Is a Scientific Methodology Markup Language
  SmML feasible ?