Evidence map›Paper›PMID 31035936›Full record

ArticleBMC bioinformatics2019

Automated assessment of biological database assertions using the scientific literature.

Mohamed Reda Bouadjenek, Justin Zobel, Karin Verspoor

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in BMC bioinformatics, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
0citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

0 citing papers in PubMed.

No citing paper in PubMed yet.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Mohamed Reda BouadjenekDepartment of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, M5S 3G8, Canada. mrb@mie.utoronto.ca.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1807-430X
Justin ZobelSchool of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 3010, Australia.
Karin VerspoorSchool of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 3010, Australia.

Funding

Australian Research Council DP150101550
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundThe large biological databases such as GenBank contain vast numbers of records, the content of which is substantively based on external resources, including published literature. Manual curation is used to establish whether the literature and the records are indeed consistent. We explore in this paper an automated method for assessing the consistency of biological assertions, to assist biocurators, which we call BARC, Biocuration tool for Assessment of Relation Consistency. In this method a biological assertion is represented as a relation between two objects (for example, a gene and a disease); we then use our novel set-based relevance algorithm SaBRA to retrieve pertinent literature, and apply a classifier to estimate the likelihood that this relation (assertion) is correct.

resultsOur experiments on assessing gene-disease relations and protein-protein interactions using the PubMed Central collection show that BARC can be effective at assisting curators to perform data cleansing. Specifically, the results obtained showed that BARC substantially outperforms the best baselines, with an improvement of F-measure of 3.5% and 13%, respectively, on gene-disease relations and protein-protein interactions. We have additionally carried out a feature analysis that showed that all feature types are informative, as are all fields of the documents.

conclusionsBARC provides a clear benefit for the biocuration community, as there are no prior automated tools for identifying inconsistent assertions in large-scale biological databases.

Indexed as

AlgorithmsDatabases, FactualDatabases, Nucleic AcidData MiningHumansProtein Interaction MapsPublishingBiological DatabasesData AnalysisData CleansingData Quality

Identifiers

PMID31035936
PMCPMC6489365

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.