Pérez M, Berlanga R, Sanz I, Aramburu MJ. BioUSeR: a semantic-based tool for retrieving Life Science web resources driven by text-rich user requirements.
J Biomed Semantics 2013;
4:12. [PMID:
23635042 PMCID:
PMC3698192 DOI:
10.1186/2041-1480-4-12]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/02/2012] [Accepted: 04/18/2013] [Indexed: 12/05/2022] Open
Abstract
Background
Open metadata registries are a fundamental tool for researchers in the Life Sciences trying to locate resources. While most current registries assume that resources are annotated with well-structured metadata, evidence shows that most of the resource annotations simply consists of informal free text. This reality must be taken into account in order to develop effective techniques for resource discovery in Life Sciences.
Results
BioUSeR is a semantic-based tool aimed at retrieving Life Sciences resources described in free text. The retrieval process is driven by the user requirements, which consist of a target task and a set of facets of interest, both expressed in free text. BioUSeR is able to effectively exploit the available textual descriptions to find relevant resources by using semantic-aware techniques.
Conclusions
BioUSeR overcomes the limitations of the current registries thanks to: (i) rich specification of user information needs, (ii) use of semantics to manage textual descriptions, (iii) retrieval and ranking of resources based on user requirements.
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