A reference ontology for profiling scholar's background knowledge in recommender systems

The profiling of background knowledge is essential in scholar's recommender systems. Existing ontology-based profiling approaches employ a pre-built reference ontology as a backbone structure for representing the scholar's preferences. However, such singular reference ontologies lack sufficient ontological concepts and are unable to represent the hierarchical structure of scholars' knowledge. They rather encompass general-purpose topics of the domain and are inaccurate in representing the scholars' knowledge. This paper proposes a method for integrating of multiple domain taxonomies to build a reference ontology, and exploits this reference ontology for profiling scholars' background knowledge. In our approach, various topics of Computer Science domain from Web taxonomies are selected, transformed by DBpedia, and merged to construct a reference ontology. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by measuring five quality-based metrics as well as application-based evaluation against the developed reference ontology. The empirical results show an improvement over the existing reference ontologies in terms of completeness, richness, and coverage

An ontology-based recommender system using scholar's background knowledge

Scholar’s recommender systems recommend scientific articles based on the similarity of articles to scholars’ profiles, which are a collection of keywords that scholars are interested in. Recent profiling approaches extract keywords from the scholars’ information such as publications, searching keywords, and homepages, and train a reference ontology, which is often a general-purpose ontology, in order to profile the scholars’ interests. However, such approaches do not consider the scholars’ knowledge because the recommender system only recommends articles which are syntactically similar to articles that scholars have already visited, while scholars are interested in articles which contain comparatively new knowledge. In addition, the systems do not support multi-area property of scholars’ knowledge as researchers usually do research in multiple topics simultaneously and are expected to receive focused-topic articles in each recommendation. To address these problems, this study develops a domain-specific reference ontology by merging six Web taxonomies and exploits Wikipedia as a conflict resolver of ontologies. Then, the knowledge items from the scholars’ information are extracted, transformed by DBpedia, and clustered into relevant topics in order to model the multi-area property of scholars’ knowledge. Finally, the clustered knowledge items are mapped to the reference ontology by using DBpedia to create clustered profiles. In addition a semantic similarity algorithm is adapted to the clustered profiles, which enables recommendation of focused-topic articles that contain new knowledge. To evaluate performance of the proposed approach, three different data sets from scholars’ information in Computer Science domain are created, and the precisions in different cases are measured. The proposed method, in comparison with the baseline methods, improves the average precision by 6% when the new reference ontology along with the full scholars’ knowledge is utilized, by an extra 7.2% when scholars’ knowledge is transformed by DBpedia, and further 8.9% when clustered profile is applied. Experimental results certify that using knowledge items instead of keywords for profiling as well as transforming the knowledge items by DBpedia can significantly improve the recommendation performance. Besides, the domain-specific reference ontology can effectively capture the full scholars’ knowledge which results to more accurate profiling

Semantic Selection of Internet Sources through SWRL Enabled OWL Ontologies

This research examines the problem of Information Overload (IO) and give an overview of various attempts to resolve it. Furthermore, argue that instead of fighting IO, it is advisable to start learning how to live with it. It is unlikely that in modern information age, where users are producer and consumer of information, the amount of data and information generated would decrease. Furthermore, when managing IO, users are confined to the algorithms and policies of commercial Search Engines and Recommender Systems (RSs), which create results that also add to IO. this research calls to initiate a change in thinking: this by giving greater power to users when addressing the relevance and accuracy of internet searches, which helps in IO. However powerful search engines are, they do not process enough semantics in the moment when search queries are formulated. This research proposes a semantic selection of internet sources, through SWRL enabled OWL ontologies. the research focuses on SWT and its Stack because they (a)secure the semantic interpretation of the environments where internet searches take place and (b) guarantee reasoning that results in the selection of suitable internet sources in a particular moment of internet searches. Therefore, it is important to model the behaviour of users through OWL concepts and reason upon them in order to address IO when searching the internet. Thus, user behaviour is itemized through user preferences, perceptions and expectations from internet searches. The proposed approach in this research is a Software Engineering (SE) solution which provides computations based on the semantics of the environment stored in the ontological model

The First 25 Years of the Bled eConference: Themes and Impacts

The Bled eConference is the longest-running themed conference associated with the Information Systems discipline. The focus throughout its first quarter-century has been the application of electronic tools, migrating progressively from Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) via Inter-Organisational Systems (IOS) and eCommerce to encompass all aspects of the use of networking facilities in industry and government, and more recently by individuals, groups and society as a whole. This paper reports on an examination of the conference titles and of the titles and abstracts of the 773 refereed papers published in the Proceedings since 1995. This identified a long and strong focus on categories of electronic business and corporate perspectives, which has broadened in recent years to encompass the democratic, the social and the personal. The conference\u27s extend well beyond the papers and their thousands of citations and tens of thousands of downloads. Other impacts have included innovative forms of support for the development of large numbers of graduate students, and the many international research collaborations that have been conceived and developed in a beautiful lake-side setting in Slovenia

Exploring perspectives of people with type-1 diabetes on goalsetting strategies within self-management education and care

Background. Collaborative goal-setting strategies are widely recommended for diabetes self-management support within healthcare systems. Creating self-management plans that fit with peoples’ own goals and priorities has been linked with better diabetic control. Consequently, goal-setting has become a core component of many diabetes selfmanagement programmes such as the ‘Dose Adjustment for Normal Eating (DAFNE) programme’. Within DAFNE, people with Type-1 Diabetes (T1D) develop their own goals along with action-plans to stimulate goal-achievement. While widely implemented, limited research has explored how goal-setting strategies are experienced by people with diabetes.Therefore, this study aims to explore the perspectives of people with T1D on theimplementation and value of goal-setting strategies within DAFNE and follow-up diabetes care. Furthermore, views on barriers and facilitators to goal-attainment are explored.Methods. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 people with T1D who attended a DAFNE-programme. Following a longitudinal qualitative research design, interviews took place 1 week, and 6-8 months after completion of DAFNE. A recurrent cross-sectional approach is applied in which themes will be identified at each time-point using thematic analyses.Expected results. Preliminary identified themes surround the difference in value that participants place on goal-setting strategies, and the lack of support for goal-achievement within diabetes care.Current stage. Data collection complete; data-analysis ongoing.Discussion. Goal-setting strategies are increasingly included in guidelines for diabetes support and have become essential parts of many primary care improvement schemes. Therefore, exploring the perspectives of people with T1D on the value and implementation of goal-setting strategies is vital for their optimal application

Study on open science: The general state of the play in Open Science principles and practices at European life sciences institutes

Nowadays, open science is a hot topic on all levels and also is one of the priorities of the European Research Area. Components that are commonly associated with open science are open access, open data, open methodology, open source, open peer review, open science policies and citizen science. Open science may a great potential to connect and influence the practices of researchers, funding institutions and the public. In this paper, we evaluate the level of openness based on public surveys at four European life sciences institute

Factors Influencing Customer Satisfaction towards E-shopping in Malaysia

Online shopping or e-shopping has changed the world of business and quite a few people have decided to work with these features. What their primary concerns precisely and the responses from the globalisation are the competency of incorporation while doing their businesses. E-shopping has also increased substantially in Malaysia in recent years. The rapid increase in the e-commerce industry in Malaysia has created the demand to emphasize on how to increase customer satisfaction while operating in the e-retailing environment. It is very important that customers are satisfied with the website, or else, they would not return. Therefore, a crucial fact to look into is that companies must ensure that their customers are satisfied with their purchases that are really essential from the ecommerce’s point of view. With is in mind, this study aimed at investigating customer satisfaction towards e-shopping in Malaysia. A total of 400 questionnaires were distributed among students randomly selected from various public and private universities located within Klang valley area. Total 369 questionnaires were returned, out of which 341 questionnaires were found usable for further analysis. Finally, SEM was employed to test the hypotheses. This study found that customer satisfaction towards e-shopping in Malaysia is to a great extent influenced by ease of use, trust, design of the website, online security and e-service quality. Finally, recommendations and future study direction is provided. Keywords: E-shopping, Customer satisfaction, Trust, Online security, E-service quality, Malaysia