Micropublications: a Semantic Model for Claims, Evidence, Arguments and Annotations in Biomedical Communications

TL;DR

The paper introduces Micropublications, a semantic model for representing claims, evidence, and arguments in biomedical literature, enabling structured, computable, and interconnected scientific assertions.

Contribution

It presents a novel semantic framework and implementation in OWL 2 for formalizing scientific argumentation and citation networks in biomedical publications.

Findings

Supports formalizing argument structures in publications

Enables construction of citation networks across large corpora

Allows modeling of support, challenge, and transitively closing assertions

Abstract

The Micropublications semantic model for scientific claims, evidence, argumentation and annotation in biomedical publications, is a metadata model of scientific argumentation, designed to support several key requirements for exchange and value-addition of semantic metadata across the biomedical publications ecosystem. Micropublications allow formalizing the argument structure of scientific publications so that (a) their internal structure is semantically clear and computable; (b) citation networks can be easily constructed across large corpora; (c) statements can be formalized in multiple useful abstraction models; (d) statements in one work may cite statements in another, individually; (e) support, similarity and challenge of assertions can be modelled across corpora; (f) scientific assertions, particularly in review articles, may be transitively closed to supporting evidence and methods. The model supports natural language statements; data; methods and materials specifications; discussion and commentary; as well as challenge and disagreement. A detailed analysis of nine use cases is provided, along with an implementation in OWL 2 and SWRL, with several example instantiations in RDF.