Invited talk at the Doctoral Consortium in EKAW 2014

1. The many ways of research in
semantic technologies
Mathieu d'Aquin - @mdaquin
slideshare.net/mdaquin
Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University

2. What is research?

3. What is research?
It's like a Ukulele...
Image: http://flickr.com/photos/gabrielleee/4619731702

4. What is doing research?
It's like playing the Ukulele...
Image: http://flickr.com/photos/gabrielleee/4619731702

5. Doing Research/
Playing the Ukulele
____________________*____________*_______*____*____*___...

6. Doing Research/
Playing the Ukulele
*: Playing to family/friends, try to impress a potential partner, playing a
gig/concert, etc.
*: Submitting/presenting/defending paper/dissertation/thesis
____________________*____________*_______*____*____*___...

7. Doing Research/
Playing the Ukulele
*: Playing to family/friends, try to impress a potential partner, playing a
gig/concert, etc.
*: Submitting/presenting/defending paper/dissertation/thesis
____________________*____________*_______*____*____*___...
__: Periods that start with not knowing what you are doing and during
which you work it out, i.e. the most important part, and the one nobody
wants to hear about!

8. What happen during * time
You show the results of the __ times
Submit defend thesis/dissertation:
a structured synthesis of you
research.
Conferences: EKAW, K-CAP, ISWC,
ESWC, ECAI, IJCAI, AAAI, ...
Journals: DKE, Data Semantics,
Applied Ontology, Knowledge
Engineering Review, Journal of Web
Semantics, Semantic Web Journal, ...
picture:
http://flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/4647592085/

9. What happens during __ times

10. What happens during __ times
http://xkcd.com/683/

11. Depends on the discipline...
http://xkcd.com/435/

12. Depends on the discipline...
(where are KA/KE/SW?)
http://xkcd.com/435/

13. Depends on the discipline...
(where are KA/KE/SW?)
http://xkcd.com/435/

14. Depends on the discipline...
(where are KA/KE/SW?)
http://xkcd.com/435/

15. Depends on the discipline...
(where are KA/KE/SW?)
http://xkcd.com/435/

16. Depends on the research
methodology...
What's that?

17. Depends on the research
methodology...
3 Types of Research
Exploratory research: Identify a question or a problem.
Constructive research: Test theories and propose answers to
questions and problems.
Empirical research: Test and acquire new knowledge by observation.

18. Depends on the research
methodology...
Many Types of Methodology
Quantitative: Based on quantifiable data and
measurements
Qualitative: Based on observations and
description of specific situations
Others and in between... (e.g. meta-analysis)

19. Depends on the research
methodology...
What do we do in KA/KE/SW?
Quantitative Qualitative
Exploratory
Constructive
Empirical

20. Depends on the research
methodology...
What do we do in KA/KE/SW?*
Quantitative Qualitative
Exploratory
Constructive +++
Empirical + +
*My subjective view

21. Example of constructive
research in KA/KE/SW
Nikolov, Andriy; d'Aquin, Mathieu and Motta, Enrico (2012). Unsupervised learning of link
discovery configuration. In ESWC 2012
Problem: Link discovery requires configuration
Existing work: Use supervise techniques to learn these
configurations
Solution: Use genetic algorithms to learn them in an unsupervised
manner
Evaluation: Quantitative - through a benchmark

22. Example of constructive
research in KA/KE/SW
d'Aquin, Mathieu and Motta, Enrico (2011). Extracting relevant questions to an RDF dataset using
formal concept analysis. In: K-CAP 2011.
Problem: Understanding what is in a
linked dataset is long and difficult
Existing work: Metadata, tagging,
visualisations, giving indirect views of
what can be done with the dataset
Solution: Extract relevant questions
automatically using Formal Concept
Analysis
Evaluation: Quantitiative - based on a
survey

23. Example of empirical research
in KA/KE/SW
Scheuermann, Andreas; Motta, Enrico; Mulholland, Paul; Gangemi, Aldo and Presutti, Valentina
(2013). An empirical perspective on representing time. In: K-CAP 2013.
Theory: Different representations of
time have different impact on people's
ability to use them
Testing method: survey /
questionnaire
Analysis: Mostly quantitative -
compare results with different
representations, but also a bit
qualitative

24. Example of empirical research
in KA/KE/SW
Ilaria Tiddi, Mathieu d'Aquin and Enrico Motta, Quantifying the bias in data links. In EKAW 2014.
Theory: Linked datasets are biased towards certain situations;Tthese
biases can be extracted from links to other datasets
Testing methods: Automated measurement of the significance of
differences between datasets
Analysis: Quantitative - t-test

25. Example of exploratory
research in KA/KE/SW
Mathieu d’Aquin, Claudio Baldassarre, Laurian Gridinoc, Sofia Angeletou, Marta Sabou, and
Enrico Motta, Characterizing Knowledge on the Semantic Web with Watson. In EON at ISWC 2007.
Area to explore: Ontologies on the web
Exploration method: Extract characteristices (e.g. size, lang, logic)
Analysis: Quantitative - Analysis of distributions

26. Why is this important?
Research is about contributing to knowledge in an area.
Doing a PhD is about making one,
substantial, self-contained, valid
research contribution.

27. In other words...
Constructive
Research
Empirical Research Exploratory Research
y1 Understand
domain
Read Read Read
y1 Develop
hypothesis
There is a better
solution to a problem
There is a theory to
prove/disprove
There is a domain with
phenomena to explore
y2 Develop
research
Create a new solution
to the problem
Design the
experiment
Design the exploration
method
y3 Obtain
results
Evaluate solution Analyse experiment Extract patterns
y3 Synthetise Write Write Write

28. Conclusion
There are many ways learn the
ukulele.
There are many ways to do
research in KA/KE/SW.
Some are more common than
others.
You are playing the ukulele
well when:
Your friends don't run away
when you start.
You have done good research
when:
It is validated, evaluated, proved.
Choosing an established
methodology makes you life
easier, and helps your peers

29. validate your research. Image:

30. Things that can help...
Doctoral consortium PhD Symposiums
(EKAW, ISWC...), (ESWC, ...)
Summer Schools
: SSSW 2015 is especially good!
http://sssw.org/2015

31. Thanks!
Carlo Allocca Fouad Zablith
Ilaria Tiddi Enrico Daga

32. Doing a PhD
Source: http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

33. Doing a PhD
Source: http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

34. Doing a PhD
Source: http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

35. Doing a PhD
Source: http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

36. Doing a PhD
Source: http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

37. Doing a PhD
Source: http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

38. Doing a PhD
Source: http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

39. A proper research methodology
so that you can prove that you
did...

40. ... and not that...