Exploring Your Research: Sprinkling some Saffron on Semantic Web Dog Food

Saffron is an application that provides users valuable insight into a research community or organisation. It makes use of several heterogeneous information sources that are under diverse ownership and control: it combines structured data from various sources on the Web with information extracted from unstructured documents using Natural Language Processing techniques to show the user a personalised view of the most important expertise topics, researchers and publications. Saffron also applies semantic technology in a novel way that goes beyond pure information retrieval: the system recommends mutual contacts (both professional and social) to the user, who would be able to broker a meaningful “shortcut” introduction to an expert. An explicit design process has resulted in an attractive and functional Web interface which provides users with an experience that goes beyond a research prototype. Rigorous evaluations have taken place that demonstrate the benefits of semantic technologies and validate the results obtained.