Preview

PDF, English - main document Download (952kB) | Terms of use

Abstract

A significant part of the world’s technical knowledge is documented in patents. This knowledge, encompassing the descriptions of technical procedures, chemical substances, methods, and processes, is crucial for addressing important technological and scientific questions and for the development of innovative solutions. However, several studies indicate that this potential is often underutilized in the scientific community. The challenges seem to stem from the complexity and structure of patents themselves, as well as a lack of expertise in leveraging existing tools to search and analyze patent information effectively. Recent research activities aim to address these challenges by developing a patent-centric knowledge graph (PKG) based on a semantic data model for patents [1]. The PKG strives to facilitate the use of patents in scientific research by providing semantically enriched patent contents as well as the interlinking between patents and scientific literature and other domain-specific knowledge sources using explicit semantics from external knowledge graphs. To support the implementation of the PKG for use in plasma science and technology, a new platform for managing semantic information in this domain has been developed using the open-source software VIVO [2]. VIVO is a web application designed for structuring, storing and provisioning of current research information based on ontologies [3]. It provides a visual representation of entities, attributes, and their relationships. This enables information to not only be available in an interoperable format for direct machine reuse, but also allows researchers to efficiently discover, maintain, and reuse the information. The present contribution shows how VIVO is used with the plasma ontology Plasma-O to develop and maintain a knowledge graph providing the core conceptual knowledge from the plasma domain in human- and machine-readable form. The domain knowledge provided by VIVO is used for the semantic annotation of patent texts in the PKG with subject-specific contextual information, e.g. the plasma sources used to generate the plasma, the medium in which the plasma is ignited, and the targets treated by the plasma. This facilitates the comprehensive analyses and reuse of knowledge contained in patents. Furthermore, it enables the direct linking of patents with research data, scientific literature, and other information sources, which are annotated using the same concepts. Beyond its application in the field of plasma science and technology, this work illustrates a generic approach for implementing community-driven knowledge graphs using VIVO in other research fields.

This work was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation)—Project Number 496963457.

[1] H. Aras, R. Dessi, F. Saad, L. Zhang, “Bridging the Innovation Gap: Leveraging Patent Information for Scientists by Constructing a Patent-centric Knowledge Graph”, 2nd International Workshop on Semantic Technologies and Deep Learning Models for Scientific, Technical and Legal Data (SemTech4STLD), May 26th, 2024, Hersonissos, Greece, https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3697/short1.pdf (accessed: 2024-09-25).

[2] I. Chaerony Siffa, R. Wagner, L. Vilardell Scholten, M. M. Becker, “Semantic Information Management in Low-Temperature Plasma Science and Technology with VIVO”, 2024, preprint, https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2409.11065.

[3] VIVO website, https://vivoweb.org/technical-specifications/ (accessed: 2024-09-25).