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Tech Report kmi-04-28 Abstract


Modelling Naturalistic Argumentation in Research Literatures: Representation and Interaction Design Issues
Techreport ID: kmi-04-28
Date: 2004
Author(s): Simon J. Buckingham Shum, Victoria Uren, Gangmin Li, Bertrand Sereno, Clara Mancini
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This paper characterises key weaknesses in the ability of current digital libraries to support scholarly inquiry, and as a way to address these, proposes computational services grounded in semiformal models of the naturalistic argumentation commonly found in research lteratures. It is argued that a design priority is to balance formal expressiveness with usability, making it critical to co-evolve the modelling scheme with appropriate user interfaces for argument construction and analysis. We specify the requirements for an argument modelling scheme for use by untrained researchers, describe the resulting ontology, contrasting it with other domain modelling and semantic web approaches, before discussing passive and intelligent user interfaces designed to support analysts in the construction, navigation and analysis of scholarly argument structures in a Web-based environment.

Publication(s):

Buckingham Shum, S.J., Uren, V.S., Li, G., Sereno, B. and Mancini, C. (2007) Modelling Naturalistic Argumentation in Research Literatures: Representation and Interaction Design Issues. International Journal of Intelligent Systems, (Special Issue on Computational Models of Natural Argumentation), 22, (1), pp.17-47
 
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Semantic Web and Knowledge Services
"The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation" (Berners-Lee et al., 2001).

Our research in the Semantic Web area looks at the potentials of fusing together advances in a range of disciplines, and applying them in a systemic way to simplify the development of intelligent, knowledge-based web services and to facilitate human access and use of knowledge available on the web. For instance, we are exploring ways in which tnatural language interfaces can be used to facilitate access to data distributed over different repositories. We are also developing infrastructures to support rapid development and deployment of semantic web services, which can be used to create web applications on-the-fly. We are also investigating ways in which semantic technology can support learning on the web, through a combination of knowledge representation support, pedagogical theories and intelligent content aggregation mechanisms. Finally, we are also investigating the Semantic Web itself as a domain of analysis and performing large scale empirical studies to uncover data about the concrete epistemologies which can be found on the Semantic Web. This exciting new area of research gives us concrete insights on the different conceptualizations that are present on the Semantic Web by giving us the possibility to discover which are the most common viewpoints, which viewpoints are mutually inconsistent, to what extent different models agree or disagree, etc...

Our aim is to be at the forefront of both theoretical and practical developments on the Semantic Web not only by developing theories and models, but also by building concrete applications, for a variety of domains and user communities, including KMi and the Open University itself.