Semantic Web-Based Information Systems: State-of-the-Art ...

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Figure 17. A possible structure for open medical research with validated feedback
based on what Paquet (n.d.) calls personal knowledge publishing, is challenging the
business models of many professional publishers (Smith, 1999), where authors are
supposed to contribute for free, only for the pleasure of being allowed to publish the
results of their work under the freely supplied peer review of their colleagues.
Here, I will discuss briefly a possible open research scenario from the medical domain,
29 which could bridge the present gap between medical research and practice.
Figure 16 depicts the present state of closed research within the medical sector, as
it would be described on the human Semantic Web.
As shown in Figure 16, a medical institute consists of research departments with
researchers that conduct research studies, which result in publications. These research
studies make use of methods and collect information that is available from
different sources.
A future scenario for medical research, based on a variation of the open research
paradigm is described in Figure 17. Here, in addition to the descriptions of Figure
16, it is shown that research studies result in findings, observations, methods, and
applications that are part of the e-knowledge managed by the medical institute.
This e-knowledge, in turn, is made available via medicare support and diagnostic
systems for best practice, which enables the research studies to make use of standardized
validated information and methods from the best available sources. Note
that, in this case, the concept of open research should be interpreted as open research
source, since it is the sources of research that are made open, while the research on
this information is separated from its collection and maintenance. In this way, the
human Semantic Web could provide a basis for a fundamental restructuring of the
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