Knowledge Graph

The underlying concept of the Open Research Knowledge Graph is already in the name. A knowledge graph connects nodes, i.e. entities, amongst each other by defining directed relationships between them.

This is an example of a knowledge graph for a paper by Robert Reed on genome editing in Lepidoptera, i.e. butterflies. You can see that the paper, which is the node represented by the grey oval, is pointed to by the node for Robert Reed, which is represented by the green oval. The relationship is called isAuthorOf, i.e. Robert Reed is author of this paper.

In more technical terms, the knowledge graph is built from triples, i.e. a subject, which is an entity, a predicate, which is a relationship or property, and an object, which is another entitiy.

Now imagine a knowledge graph with thousands of scientific papers all entered in the fashion. The machine-actionability of such a graph allows for a very quick way of querying, e.g. all papers that have an addresses relationship with the Genome editing in Lepidoptera node and on which data these papers are evaluated with. That way, you would have an overview of related work on the topic of Genome editing in Lepidoptera and what data it is evaluated on, which method was used, and so on, in no time.