Effective search and exploitation of electromagnetic knowledge in the web [EM programmer's notebook]

Abstract

This month's contribution addresses an important topic for all of us: how to improve the accuracy of Internet-based literature searches. (At the time of writing, a human expert is still far more likely to provide a useful answer to a question such as, "What is the key reference in fi eld X," than an Inter net search engine). Whilst of course this topic is relevant to all fi elds of scientifi c enquiry, the authors have investigated this here in the specifi c context of electromagnetic engineering. Esposito and Tarricone's group at the University of Salento, Italy, have been regular contributors to this column, including the AbstractWe all are aware of the huge amount of electromagnetic information and knowledge available in the Web, both in the form of PDF scientifi c papers, and in other forms (e.g., software, datasets). Similarly, we all have experienced the frustration of searching the Web for papers and other information, and getting useless or unsatisfactory results. All these limitations clearly demonstrate that information technologies (IT) need further progress so as to improve the effi ciency of the mentioned processes. Indeed, there is fervid activity around this goal, and some interesting achievements have begun to appear in terms of search effectiveness and navigation satisfaction. Novel formats for representing scientifi cpaper contents are proposed, enhancing machine processing capability. However, embracing the new information technology proposals requires a cultural change from authors and from editors, and we cannot take it for granted that it will happen in the near future. Moreover, already-published papers should not be left out from approaching Web innovations. In this paper, we therefore focus both on the emerging technologies for generating more searchable fi les, and on those technologies allowing the transformation of existing PDF fi les into more-effective formats. These technologies need to be customized to each specifi c domain, thus rendering the codifi cation of specifi c electromagnetic (EM) concepts of paramount importance. A use case is proposed on a specifi c EM example, so as to demonstrate the viability and effectiveness of the proposed approach.