Who are the experts? e-Scholars in the semantic web

Scholarly research is the sum of diverse activities and leads to the dissemination of a large amount of material. Traditional approaches to exploring and becoming proficient within an esoteric research field rely on slow and sometimes ineffective discourse, and depend more on a scholar's detect...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Kampa, Simon
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: 2002
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/257222/
https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/257222/1/thesis.pdf
Description
Summary:Scholarly research is the sum of diverse activities and leads to the dissemination of a large amount of material. Traditional approaches to exploring and becoming proficient within an esoteric research field rely on slow and sometimes ineffective discourse, and depend more on a scholar's detective skill, effort, and perseverance. However, the Web has introduced the potential for improved accessibility, interconnectivity, and more efficient and effective communication; we are becoming e-Scholars. Current efforts on the Web have focussed mainly on improving the accessibility of on-line research material and as a result, researchers have yet to realise the full implications of the new medium. Consequently, the emphasis must shift to improving and enhancing access to scholarly material; this research proposes a novel approach by presenting researchers with the facility to comprehensively, extensively, and rationally explore their research field and ask intricate questions about it and the individual facts and issues raised by it. This is realised through the integration of principles from the hypertext, Semantic Web, and digital library fields to interconnect and analyse all scholarly material in the academic domain. The e-Scholar Knowledge Inference Model (ESKIMO) demonstrates the approach and provides a platform for evaluation and further research.