A Unified Nanopublication Model for
Effective and User-Friendly Access to
the Elements of Scientific Publishing

Scientific publishing: ancient paradigms still in place

• Long texts in natural language in formats like PDF
• Digitized, but not machine-interpretable
• Quality checking with peer reviews which are also long texts in natural language

A nanopublication-style communication interaction

Previous work^[1]:
Reviews can be made more structured and precise

[1] Bucur, C.I., Kuhn, T., Ceolin, D.: Peer reviewing revisited: Assessing research with interlinked semantic comments. K-CAP 2019.

Research question

Can we use the concept of nanopublications as a unifying model to represent in a semantic and fine-grained way the elements of publications, their interrelations as well as their provenance and their assessments?

A nanopublication^[2]:
a fine-grained provenance-aware Linked Data format

[2] Groth, P., Gibson, A., Velterop, J.: The anatomy of a nanopublication. Information Services & Use 30, 51–56 (2010).

Nanopublication of a review comment

Nanopublication assertion of a review comment

Research questions (1)

• RQ1: Can we use nanopublications as a unifying data model to represent the structure, links and assessments of manuscripts in a precise, transparent, and provenance-aware manner?


• Evaluation:
  • descriptive analysis on a small case study applying the model

Use case data: recent publications with their reviews from the Semantic Web Journal

Research questions (2)

• RQ2: Is a fine-grained semantic publishing and reviewing model able to provide editors with answers to common competency questions?


• Evaluation: competency questions (CQs)
  • formalizations as SPARQL queries
  • prototype of a fine-grained semantic analysis interface for editors

Competency questions from the editor's point of view:

• CQ1: What is the number of positive and negative comments per reviewer?
• CQ2: What is the number of and negative comments per section?
• CQ3: What is the distribution of review comments with respect to the content or presentation of the article?
• CQ4: What is the nature of the review comments with respect to whether they refer to a specific paragraph or a larger structure like a section?
• CQ5: What are the critical points raised by the reviewers?
• CQ6: How many points were raised that need to be addressed by the authors?
• CQ7: How do the review comment cover the different sections and paragraphs?

Query CQ1: What is the number of positive and negative comments per reviewer?

Research questions (3)

• RQ3: Can we design an intuitive and effective interface based on a fine-grained semantic publishing and reviewing model that supports journal editors?


• Evaluation: user study
  • perceived importance of the defined CQs for editors
  • perceived usefulness of the prototype for answering CQs

User study with editors

• Invitations sent to editors of Computer Science journals: PeerJ CS, Semantic Web, Data Science Journal
• 401 invitations sent, received a total of 42 answers (10.5%)

User study with editors: importance of CQs

User study interface: reviewer-oriented view

User study interface: section-oriented view

User study with editors: interface usefulness

Most of the CQs are considered important, while our interface is considered useful

Conclusions

• The different elements of scientific publishing can be represented in a fine-grained and semantic manner with nanopublications (RQ1)
• We can answer a set of CQs for editors using SPARQL queries (RQ2)
• Editors mostly find the defined CQs important and our prototype useful (RQ3)

Future work

• Extending our approach to represent the content of research findings
• Linking it to article quality
• Interfaces for reviewers and authors

Acknowledgements: thank you!

• IOS Press: Maarten Fröhlich, Stephanie Delbeque
• Sound and Vision Institute: Erwin Verbruggen, Johan Oomen
• Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam: Jacco van Ossenbruggen