A paper authored by Informatics PhD student Donald Keefer and Assistant Professor Karen Wickett, "Adapting Research Process Models for the Design of Knowledge Engineering Applications," has received the Best Short Paper Award at the 2020 Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) Annual Meeting.
Research Process Modeling (RPM) enables a research workflow to be systematically deconstructed and documented. For their study, Keefer and Wickett adapted RPM to support the information and document needs associated with the design of a knowledge system.
"Knowledge engineering refers to a set of methods that allow us to store knowledge, information, and data into a type of database called a knowledge base and then answer complex questions related to anything stored in the knowledge base. The applications resulting from knowledge engineering efforts are called knowledge systems," explained Keefer. "RPM is helpful here because it uses two types of diagrams and two types of inventory tables to provide novel insights on how processes and knowledge are used throughout the workflow. We made minor modifications to the diagrams and inventory tables and found these changes provided significant additional insight to our knowledge engineering design needs."
Keefer's dissertation research is developing a knowledge system for assisting in the interpretation of different types of geologic observations. He earned his master's degree in soils and bachelor's degree in geology from the University of Illinois.
Wickett's research areas include the conceptual and logical foundations of information organization systems and artifacts. She is most interested in the analysis of common concepts in information systems, such as documents, datasets, databases, digital objects, metadata records, and collections. She earned her PhD in library and information science from the University of Illinois.