Frequently Asked Questions

General questions

  1. What is ScienceWISE?

    The ScienceWISE project aims to develop a scientist-generated on-line knowledge base fully integrated into the physics ArXiv.org

    The ScienceWISE system allows scientists, in the course of their daily work

    1. to dynamically generate professional-field-specific ontologies: add concepts and logical relations between them; provide expertly-written, community-ranked definition articles and links to other existing resources;
    2. to create an interactive semantic environment, annotating scientific research papers, uploaded to ArXiv.org, and linking them to the ScienceWISE ontology, thus expanding content of their papers with supporting material in the form of encyclopedia-like articles.

    2. More information about the project is available here
  2. What does "ScienceWISE" stand for?

    WISE stands for Web-based Interactive Semantic Environment. We try to create a suite of convenient web-based tools that will encourage scientists to organize the scientific information into an ontology-like structures and make scientific papers more self-contained.

  3. Why do you need all this if there is Wikipedia?

    The main difference of our Ontology from most existing online resources is in a possibility to have several single-authored definitions of the same concept. Unlike Wikipedia, ScienceWISE provides a mechanism for scientific community ranking (by linking against the best definitions) and provides a peer-run quality assurance system.


What is ...?

  1. What is Annotated or Tagged PDF?

    Annotated (or Tagged) PDF is the hyper-version of the PDF text of the ArXiv.org article, where all the relevant concepts are linked to the definitions. Scientists can provide their own definitions, link to the definitions of other people, or use a hyperlink to any external resource. The resulting text looks like this:

    We revisit Lyman-alpha bounds on the dark matter mass in Lambda Warm Dark Matter (Lambda-WDM) models, and derive new bounds in the case of mixed Cold plus Warm models (Lambda-CWDM), using a set up which is a good approximation for several theoretically well-motivated dark matter models. We combine WMAP5 results with two different Lyman-alpha data sets, including observations from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We pay a special attention to systematics, test various possible sources of error, and compare the results of different statistical approaches. Expressed in terms of the mass of a non-resonantly produced sterile neutrino, our bounds read m_NRP > 8 keV (frequentist 99.7% confidence limit) or m_NRP > 12.1 keV (Bayesian 95% credible interval) in the pure Lambda-WDM limit. For the mixed model, we obtain limits on the mass as a function of the warm dark matter fraction F_WDM. Within the mass range studied here (5 keV < m_NRP < infinity), we find that any mass value is allowed when F_WDM < 0.6 (frequentist 99.7% confidence limit); similarly, the Bayesian joint probability on (F_WDM, 1/m_NRP) allows any value of the mass at the 95% confidence level, provided that F_WDM < 0.35.

  2. What is "Definition"?

    The ScienceWISE system provides a possibility to have several single-authored definitions of the same concept. Unlike Wikipedia, ScienceWISE provides a mechanism for scientific community ranking (by linking against the best definitions) and provides a peer-run quality assurance system. Writing a definition article that becomes popular, gives an opportunity to promote one's own views; increase the visibility of a subfield or of a young research; present in a consolidated form important results. See for example: Andreev reflection by Carlo Beenakker or Neutrino Minimal Standard Model by Mikhail Shaposhnikov. All definition articles are available for the authors for annotation of their regular research papers.

  3. What is "Ontology"?

    We have an ever-growing collection of scientific concepts, organized by categories: an ontology. For most of the concepts we provide some additional information:

    1. Their alternative names and typlica abbreviations (e.g. DM for "dark matter" or "QHE" for "Quantum Hall effect"
    2. For most of the concepts we have one or several links to various encyclopedia articles that as describe them
    3. For some of the concepts we specify their relations to the other concepts

    You can
    1. click on any concept in the list of concepts found in your any Arxiv paper to arrive to its page in the ontology;
    2. You can search for any term from our main page;
    3. or you can click here to browse the ontology;
    4. You can add any term which is not yet in our ontology by clicking here.

How do I...?

  1. How do I register?

    To register to go the ScienceWISE home page and click on the Register link in the upper right corner. You will be directed to a simple form. You will be asked to choose your login/password combination and provide your full name. We ask you to use your full name, because all your contributions will bear your authorship.

  2. How do I provide a definition?

    There are several ways to do this

    1. Providing a definition from the annotation page.
    2. Providing a definition for any concept that you visit in ontology.

Example of the arxiv page