A flexiformal model of knowledge dissemination and aggregation in mathematics

Abstract

In the traditional knowledge dissemination process in mathematics and sciences, authors write semi-selfcontained articles which are then published in journals, conference proceedings, preprint archives, and/or given as talks. Other scientists read these, extract the new knowledge, integrate it into their personal mental model of the field, and use this as the basis for creating new knowledge which is disseminated in the same form. Somewhat surprisingly, this process has not been modeled from a formal or content-based perspective even though it is at the heart of human MKM and DML. In this paper we tackle this problem starting from the practice of beginning papers with a “recap”, which briefly introduces context, terminology, and notations and thus ties the paper into the knowledge commons. We propose a flexiformal model for knowledge dissemination and its aggregation into a communal, shared knowledge commons based on theory graphs and the newly introduced realms.