SciLite: A platform for displaying text-mined annotations as a means to link research articles with biological data

Abstract

The tremendous growth in biological data has resulted in an increase in the number of research papers being published. This presents a great challenge for scientists in searching and assimilating facts described in those papers. Particularly, biological databases depend on curators to add highly precise and useful information that are usually extracted by reading research articles. Therefore, there is an urgent need to find ways to improve linking literature to the underlying data, thereby minimising the effort in browsing content and identifying key biological concepts. As part of the development of Europe PMC, we have developed a new platform, SciLite, which integrates text-mined annotations from different sources and overlays those outputs on research articles. The aim is to aid researchers and curators using Europe PMC in finding key concepts more easily and provide links to related resources or tools, bridging the gap between literature and biological data.