Structured Digital Abstracts - Easier Literature Searching

Already blogging on similar lines and the subject of Bring in data from the published literature in my earlier blog Smart tools to track, analyze and visualize research , here is another interesting experiment on similar lines:

The experiment centres on Structured Digital Abstracts (SDA). SDA are extensions of the normal journal article abstracts that describe the relationship between two biological entities, mentioning the method used to study the relationship. Each sentence is preceded by one or more identifiers pointing to the corresponding database entries that contain the full details of the interaction e.g. protein A interacts with protein B, by method X.

The aim of SDA is to assist data entry, text mining and literature searching by extracting the salient data from the article into simple sentences using a defined structure and controlled vocabularies.

Gianni Cesareni, Editor of FEBS Letters explains:

Many articles in biological journals describe relationships between entities (genes, proteins, etc.) yet this information cannot be efficiently used because of difficulties in retrieving from text. Databases capture this valuable information and organize it in a structured format ready for automatic analysis. The experiment of using SDAs will facilitate database entry and improve disclosure, to the benefit of authors and readers.

Smart tools to track, analyze and visualize research

Yes i am talking about the development in the field of literature search and scientific publication search. Looking beyond NLP some of the advancements and service models based on NLP and other advanced methods. Today to the user's delight there are quite a few companies and organization that provide services that absolutely make an scientist life easy!

These services revolve around customized alert services for selected search terms, specific research area of interest even more so pertaining to a list of custom key-word and search terms that the service providers allow the user to choose form. The scientist can simply subscribe to such service, sit back and wait for daily updates. The updates are provided on a day to day basis at his desktop.

He gets abstract summarization, full text summarization so that he need not actually go through the ordeal of reading through pages of scientific literature. Some once else does the job for him and just pick up the right things that he would look for in such papers. It is a very interactive service where on a daily basis the user can keep track of the quality of the service and set it right so that he can make sure that he just gets the right things he ever wants and nothing else other than that.

Over and above the service is provided using cutting edge technology, attractive web interface. Such interface come in all colour with floating dockable modules which is easy to use and some smart tools too. These smart tools enable the user to track, analyze, visualize and develop relationships among blocks of data that is being provided as "lego blocks".

"Knowledge is power" but knowledge is money too big money these days!

As an estimate companies providing such services are looking at a market size of $770 million worldwide which spans across verticals like bio-cheminformatics, knowledge management and content database. While the estimated market size for computational chemistry and knowledge management for life science vertical is approximately $400 million.