What the semantic web could do for the life sciences

Abstract Scientific research is predicated on the effective exchange of knowledge. The effective exchange of data and accompanying interpretation underpin new hypotheses and experimental designs, typically followed by a community-based process of debate and rebuttal. This community-driven process clarifies and strengthens the elements of facts and hypothesis. Within the life sciences, the result of this process is a collective understanding of emerging biological viewpoints. The methodologies for community debate and knowledge transfer have changed little over the past twenty years, although both scientific instrumentation and publishing technologies have undergone revolutionary change. It is proposed that newly published recommendations from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which handle the domain and process-specific semantics of life sciences, would better support the application of peer-reviewed knowledge in discovery research. W3C semantic web technologies support flexible, extensible and evolvable knowledge transfer and reuse, enabling scientists and their organizations to increase efficiency across the scientific process.

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