Connecting and synchronizing scientific artifacts through the process of conceptual change

Abstract

In this age of digital science, our scientific knowledge is fragmented into data, methods, schemas, ontology, code and workflows – each of them largely disconnected from the others and manipulated within their own specialized tools. These tools have disaggregated our scientific knowledge and analytic processes. As a result, it is becoming much harder to decipher scholarly outcomes; much information is lost within the broken connections among various artifacts and processes, and the deeper knowledge required to model and communicate the conceptual underpinning of research is often not captured. This work proposes a model that attempts to provide a coordinated view of evolving scientific knowledge. The model connects various scientific artifacts – categories, database schema and ontologies – through the ‘process of conceptual change’, allowing both connections and artifacts to evolve in sync with each other. This not only makes explicit some of the missing knowledge, but also supports instantaneously live and connected science, keeping knowledge artifacts consistent with each other.