The end of the scientific paper as we know it(in 4 easy steps)

Frank van Harmelen

Paul Groth

VU Amsterdam

And how the Semantic Web makes it possible

Scientific publishing hasn’t changed in 350 years

• Letter from Christian Huygens (1652)• Writing to his prof in Mathematics• Citing (and complaining about)

work of Descartes• One of 3000 letters by Huygens

2017: Only superficial changes

• Different format & style

• Different medium(Web, PDF)

• Different speed (PubMed = 2 papers/min)

Section 1: Related work

Section 2: Research question

Section 3: Experimental design

Section 4: Experimental findings

Section 5: Interpretation, conclusions

And our papers still follow this storyline:

Step 1: Study & interpret literature

Step 2: Formulate hypothesis

Step 3: Design experiment

Step 4: Execute experiment

Step 5: Publish results

This storyline is important, but only readable by people, not for machines

How to make our papers more usable?

“We only need information extraction because we first did information burial” (Barend Mons)

“A journal paper is a state-funeral for your results”

(Hans Akkermans)

Step 1: explicit rhetorical structureCapture the roles of blocks of text &

make these roles explicit

1 paper = 1 Network of blocksN papers = 1 Network of blocks

Results Results

Interpretations

Interpretations

Conclusions

Problem

Method

Results

Interpretations

Conclusions

Problem

Method

One paper Another paper

Step 2: explicit fine-grained rhetorical structure

Locate individual knowledge items

and their relationships

Example: Scholonto, ClaiMaker [Buckinham-Shum]Paper = set of claimsClaim = text – relation – textRelation = causes, predicts, prevents; addresses, solves

equals, is-similar-to; proofs, supports, challenges

1 paper = 1 fine-grained network of relationsN papers = 1 fine-grained network of relations

Step 3: do away with the paper altogether.

• Any fact is a relation between two things (“triple”)

• Count each fact as a nano-publication

• Together, these nano-publications form a

huge very fine-grained network of relations, a web of knowledge,a “semantic web”

• Computers as colleagues, not (only) tools

Just publish the facts

Step 4: turning context into a 1st class citizen

• Link to all the stuff that goes on before publication:– Datasets, workflows

– Open Lab books

– Open peer reviewing

• Link to all the stuff that goes on after publication:– Websites

– Blogs

– Emails

– Tweets

– Give web-addresses to objects (URIs)

– Use the web to link between the objects

– Provide meaning in a form that computers can handle (RDF)

These principles embodied

in already deployed technology

We can build this using semantic web technology

So now we have…

No longer a set of disconnected monolithic PDFs

A network of facts, reviews, evidence, opinions, data