Aliases and Ambiguity: A case study of gene aliases, and implications for information curation and AI

Armstrong, Chandler Matthew

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/15063 Copy

Description

Title

Aliases and Ambiguity: A case study of gene aliases, and implications for information curation and AI

Author(s)

Armstrong, Chandler Matthew

Issue Date

2010-02-03

Keyword(s)

• Gene Name Disambiguation
• Name Ambiguity
• Synonyms

Abstract

This research seeks to understand how names and aliases of concepts are used in scienti c literature. Natural language processing tools, and data curation in general, depend upon unique concept identi ers for information, and aliases only provide more oppurtunity for ambiguiyt; despite this, aliases seem to persist in literature and daily life. As a case study, gene names are analyzed. This article presents a discus- sion on patterns of alias usage, and implications this has for bioinformatics librarianship. Observation suggests that research scientists in the bio-medical elds think about infor- mation organization from their contextual perspective, and organize information to be most applicable to their daily re- search tasks. Information scientist might think about infor- mation from a more generalized perspective, and prefer cat- egorizations that minimize ambiguity. Aliases used by scien- tists probably emerge for functional reasons, each providing distinct semantic roles, despite that they create ambiguity from an information curation perspective. In light of this, information science must be careful to consider contexual needs of information users, and word sense disambiguation models will become increasingly important to deal with the increasingly complex grammar for talking about concepts in scienti c research.

Type of Resource

text

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/15063

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