RE: Evidence of Significance of Semantic Web for Life Sciences

Oliver,

Elsevier uses semantic technologies (i.e. OWL ontologies, a Linked Data Repository, metadata in RDF) throughout all of our content management, search and annotation systems. If OWL/RDF were to evaporate tomorrow, our products (including the Cell and other cell biology publications) wouldn't work - it's as simple as that. Is that enough evidence? Let me know if you need something more formal. 

Best, 

- Anita.  

Anita de Waard
Disruptive Technologies Director, Elsevier Labs
http://elsatglabs.com/labs/anita/
a.dewaard@elsevier.com



-----Original Message-----
From: Andrea Splendiani (RRes-Roth) [mailto:andrea.splendiani@rothamsted.ac.uk]
Sent: Thu 12/22/2011 10:09
To: Oliver Ruebenacker
Cc: public-semweb-lifesci
Subject: Re: Evidence of Significance of Semantic Web for Life Sciences
 
Hi Oliver,

I think it's hard to find this form of "breakthrough evidence" and this may even be counterproductive to convince people.
If you present a high-level, breakthrough result (say, we save lives), than you leave two open questions:
- how much of this is dependent on the computational support ?
- ok, they used semantic web technologies, could we use something else ?

Another way to go would be to measure results over resources (benefits is economic) or adoption (benefit is potential for economies of scale).
There is a wide range of sources to cite about this out of the biomedical world, from companies to governments.

Look for "Biomedical Semantics in the Semantic Web" in JBS, we write something about adoption, you may find some link/inspiration there.

ciao,
Andrea




Il giorno 21/dic/2011, alle ore 16.39, Oliver Ruebenacker ha scritto:

>     Hello,
> 
>  I am looking for evidence I can quote to convince non-experts of the
> significance of applying Semantic Web to biomedical research,
> especially computational cell biology.
> 
>  I need a recorded public statement from a source recognizable as
> authoritative to a non-expert: e.g. could be from a relevant
> government agency, a well-known research institution (including major
> grad schools and companies), a well-known (i.e. well-known outside the
> field) expert, some one where a brief look at the biography
> immediately suggests he or she is an authority, some one quoted in
> major media, etc.
> 
>  Significance could mean abstract things like advancing science and
> health care, but even better would be tangible things like: saves
> lives, saves money, cures cancer/malaria/AIDS, creates jobs, etc.
> 
>  Thanks a lot!
> 
>     Take care
>     Oliver
> 
> -- 
> Oliver Ruebenacker, Computational Cell Biologist
> Virtual Cell (http://vcell.org)
> SBPAX: Turning Bio Knowledge into Math Models (http://www.sbpax.org)
> http://www.oliver.curiousworld.org
> 



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Received on Thursday, 22 December 2011 15:28:46 UTC