A study of usage of symbols and opinionated words in annotation for modeling literature survey experiences

摘要

Student enrolled in research based degree programs conduct literature survey to identify and to specify issues which need to be addressed in their domain of interest. They annotate research articles either using symbolic markers such as underline, question mark, circle etc or record their observations, opinion, queries in textual form of comments. These annotations may be recorded either manually using pen/pencil or electronically using any text/word processor tool. These annotations of research scholars are very valuable knowledge resource and are associated with annotators sentiments. Sharing of these resources amongst community of researchers is likely to reduce time taken in literature survey and may foster collaborative research. In this paper, we present the results of our research to identify symbolic markers and opinionated words commonly used in annotating research articles. We have identified eight different types of symbols and a set of opinionated words based on a survey with teachers and graduate students and analysis of manually annotated research papers and comments of reviewers on research article submitted for a conference. To manage these annotations and literature survey experiences of researchers, we propose a model using RDFS (Resource Description Framework Schema). Important resources identified by us include annotation, annotation trace, annotation type, sentiment etc. An annotation trace represents resultant artifacts of literature survey and used to model the experiences associated with it. Each annotation and annotation trace have well defined unique type and specific sentiment orientation and polarity value. Based on above model, we have implemented a tool which facilitates annotation of research articles, management of annotation and annotated research papers and their sharing amongst the peer annotators.