Many different problems and tasks in professional information retrieval can be viewed as workflows, which means that they can be solved similarly:
- Scientists often need to search in several data sources and combine, filter and aggregate the results. A scientific workflow might include taking text data sources and a repository of biomarkers[1] and combining them in a way that the biomarkers are annotated in the texts, then clustering the occurrences, and finally producing a graphical visualisation of the result.
- Any kind of professional information gathering can be captured in a workflow. Chemists developing a new detergent need to know whether the tenside they are considering is already protected as intellectual property of a competitor. The chemists approach their IP professional and request a freedom-to-operate search before they can continue working on the detergent. The IP searcher has prepared reusable information such as buckets (e.g. collections of words describing detergents) and can easily create a workflow to search for all documents about detergents and all that mention the tenside, and do an intersection (AND).
Leonardo offers a workbench for professional information retrieval based on the workflow paradigm.
The Leonardo System will come to life through an open source migration strategy. In a first step, a workflow builder will be developed, which will then be migrated to the IRF Industry Portal in close cooperation with the Eclipse open source community. This will provide Leonardo users with greater transparency of the used technologies and a more straightforward extensibility. In the end, all 3 sub-communities of the IRF Industry Portal will benefit from Leonardo:
- The scientific community will benefit from a guided technology transfer. Scientists will be able to create new workflow components and publish them as a sample workflow (e.g. on MAREC data), so that others can try it out via the IRF Industry Portal’s prototype area. Other research institutions or industrial companies will be able to experiment with the workflows and engage in collaboration.
- Information professionals from Industry will benefit from tools that allow managing collaborative tasks, and additionally provide dashboards, feedback channels and final reports.
- The open and extensible structure of Leonardo will also create a market for open source software developers and IT companies offering many business opportunities. Depending on their domain of expertise, these companies can offer specialised consulting services, and use the IRF Industry Portal marketplace to offer their products and services.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomarker: substance used as an indicator of a biologic state
