Supporting Structured Browsing for Full-Text Scientific Research Reports

TL;DR

This paper explores capturing the inherent structure of scientific research reports to develop advanced, interactive document browsers that enhance navigation and linking within digital scientific libraries.

Contribution

It introduces a framework for modeling research report structures and applies it to create interactive browsers for PLoS articles, improving access and understanding.

Findings

Developed a conceptual modeling framework for research reports

Implemented interactive browsers with novel widgets

Enhanced linking and navigation in digital scientific libraries

Abstract

Scientific research is highly structured and some of that structure is reflected in research reports. Traditional scientific research reports are yielding to interactive documents which expose their internal structure and are richly linked to other materials. In these changes, there are opportunities to take advantage of the structure in scientific research reports which previously have not been systematically captured. Thus, we explore ways of capturing more of the structure of research in reports about the research and we use that structure to support the development of a new generation of document browsers which include novel interaction widgets. We apply the browsers incorporating the conceptual modeling framework to full-text research reports from the Public Library of Science (PLoS). In addition, we describe the application of model-oriented constructs to facilitating highly interlinked digital libraries.