Sketches of aspects of Literature-based Discovery (LBD) in the context of text documents

1. LITERATURE-BASED DISCOVERY: IT'S ALL
ABOUT CONNECTING DOTS IN WIDELY
DISPARATE TEXTS
Jack Park
The Future of Text Conference
Menlo Park, California
25 August, 2016
© 2016, TopicQuests Foundation

2. As I’ve observed, “connecting the dots” means
putting pieces of puzzle together:
you get enriched by one or more relevant
disciplines,
and what you learned from all other fields
brings a great possibility of making unique
insights.
It helps you to see things from a different point.
—Kary Mullis, Nobel Laureate 1993

3. WEAVING AN INFORMATION FABRIC
¢ A goal of Literature-based
Discovery is to connect dots
while weaving an information
fabric during machine reading
of larger amounts of literature.
¢ Literature-based Discovery,
the field, was created by the
information scientist Don R.
Swanson in the 1980s.*
https://www.flickr.com/photos/fermicat/
273539481/in/set-72157601620157588/
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_R._Swanson

4. LITERATURE-BASED DISCOVERY - LBD
¢ Swanson’s ABC Model
¢ Two Varieties of LBD
— Closed Discovery
— Open Discovery
Find intermediate documents
(B) between A and C which
allow to intersect concepts:
•Some document introduces
concept B
•Document A also refers to B
•Document C also refers to B

5. ROLES OF TEXT IN LBD
¢ Obvious role:
— Provide a means to convey information (story) about particular topic(s)
¢ Other roles:
— Facilitate ease of harvesting
¢ Application of keywords to identify key topics and relations
¢ Application of document structure to:
¢ Segment aspects of story:
— Actors
— Their relations
— Their states
— Processes in which actors participate

6. BRINGING IN THE SOCIAL
¢ Situate documents such that social gestures can work together
with computational LBD:
— Enable in-document annotations (e.g. https://hypothes.is/ )
— Enable in-document tagging
— Enable on-the-web wiring of coherence relations among
¢ Whole documents
¢ Individual annotations
¢ Humans weave fabrics through the use of those features
¢ Topic maps track subjects and relations
¢ Timeline browsing allows for playback to watch the fabric evolve

7. COMPLETED REPRESENTATION
antioxidants
kill
free radicals
Contraindicates
macrophages use
free radicals to
kill bacteria
Bacterial Infection Antioxidants
Because
Appropriate For
Compromised Host
Let us co-create woven information fabrics
jackpark@topicquests.org
Thanks to Mark Szpakowki for suggestion
of the social fabric weaving scenario