The Semantic Reader Project: Augmenting Scholarly Documents through AI-Powered Interactive Reading Interfaces
Abstract
Scholarly publications are key to the transfer of knowledge from scholars to others. However, research papers are information-dense, and as the volume of the scientific literature grows, the need for new technology to support the reading process grows. In contrast to the process of finding papers, which has been transformed by Internet technology, the experience of reading research papers has changed little in decades. The PDF format for sharing research papers is widely used due to its portability, but it has significant downsides including: static content, poor accessibility for low-vision readers, and difficulty reading on mobile devices. This paper explores the question "Can recent advances in AI and HCI power intelligent, interactive, and accessible reading interfaces -- even for legacy PDFs?" We describe the Semantic Reader Project, a collaborative effort across multiple institutions to explore automatic creation of dynamic reading interfaces for research papers. Through this project, we've developed ten research prototype interfaces and conducted usability studies with more than 300 participants and real-world users showing improved reading experiences for scholars. We've also released a production reading interface for research papers that will incorporate the best features as they mature. We structure this paper around challenges scholars and the public face when reading research papers -- Discovery, Efficiency, Comprehension, Synthesis, and Accessibility -- and present an overview of our progress and remaining open challenges.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2303.14334,
title = {The Semantic Reader Project: Augmenting Scholarly Documents through AI-Powered Interactive Reading Interfaces},
author = {Kyle Lo and Joseph Chee Chang and Andrew Head and Jonathan Bragg and Amy X. Zhang and Cassidy Trier and Chloe Anastasiades and Tal August and Russell Authur and Danielle Bragg and Erin Bransom and Isabel Cachola and Stefan Candra and Yoganand Chandrasekhar and Yen-Sung Chen and Evie Yu-Yen Cheng and Yvonne Chou and Doug Downey and Rob Evans and Raymond Fok and Fangzhou Hu and Regan Huff and Dongyeop Kang and Tae Soo Kim and Rodney Kinney and Aniket Kittur and Hyeonsu Kang and Egor Klevak and Bailey Kuehl and Michael Langan and Matt Latzke and Jaron Lochner and Kelsey MacMillan and Eric Marsh and Tyler Murray and Aakanksha Naik and Ngoc-Uyen Nguyen and Srishti Palani and Soya Park and Caroline Paulic and Napol Rachatasumrit and Smita Rao and Paul Sayre and Zejiang Shen and Pao Siangliulue and Luca Soldaini and Huy Tran and Madeleine van Zuylen and Lucy Lu Wang and Christopher Wilhelm and Caroline Wu and Jiangjiang Yang and Angele Zamarron and Marti A. Hearst and Daniel S. Weld},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2303.14334},
year = {2023}
}