Knowledge acquisition and representation techniques in scholarly communication

Paper journals, conferences and workshops have been the major media for scholarly discourse for 300 years. However, in the 1990s access to low-cost personal computing and Internet communications is leading to radical changes in the operation of scholarly communities. Electronic publication and conferencing is becoming common in all disciplines using commonly available Internet facilities such as ftp archives, list servers, gopher and world-wide web. Some scholarly communities that had not previously achieved a critical mass have done so through the net, others have launched major collaborative projects managed through the net, and others are questioning the value of conventional conferences that are limited by being localized in space and time compared with the flexibility of continuous international electronic conferencing through the web. However, the majority of current electronic scholarly discourse emulates paper-based media in relying primarily on text and diagrams for knowledge communication. It is beginning to take advantage of some of the multimedia capabilities of electronic publishing for color diagrams, pictures, movies and sound. Hypertext and hypermedia capabilities are being used to develop webs of linked material. Concept maps and formal knowledge structures are being used to provide a framework for knowledge expression, interchange and collaborative development. This article focuses on the extension of current documentation technologies to provide knowledge-level support for scholarly communities.