Nanopublications and in silico discovery
We propose a new way to represent data, information and, in particular, assertions in the form of nanopublications. A nanopubli- cation is essentially the smallest unit of publication: a single assertion, associating two concepts by means of a predicate in machine- readable format with proper metadata on provenance and context. .... Nanopublications support in silico knowledge discovery, tapping massive treasures of implicit information ... When reasoning over the associations represented in such a computer readable set of assertions a scientist may have reason to check—even to doubt—any particular assertion, in the graph. Ideally, the list of underpinning articles and other data sources supporting that claim should be just a click away, enabled by the nanopublication provenance. The researcher can now judge the validity of the claim in question much better by reading the articles than by trying to judge a rhetoric argument that is painfully distorted into machine-readable format. .... The provenance-linked nanopublications have the potential to increase the conventional cita- tion rate of the article and database as well as provide the potential for microattribution.