Theoretical and practical wonders of the web: the 25th International WWW Conference

By Kuansan Wang (opens in new tab), Director, Internet Services Research Center, Microsoft Research

Anyone reading the program for the 25th International World Wide Web Conference (opens in new tab) (WWW) would find it obvious that web innovation, powered by passionate scientists, users, and developers, continues to accelerate. At WWW this week, Microsoft Research hopes to connect with innovators and researchers to learn more about how they’re using and integrating our academic services.

At last year’s WWW Conference in Florence, we released the Microsoft Academic Graph (opens in new tab) (MAG). MAG is now accessible via the Academic Knowledge API (opens in new tab), which allows researchers to tap into a wealth of academic content. The MAG data set and APIs are currently being used in the KDD Cup 2016 Challenge (opens in new tab). We also want to share the latest that Microsoft Academic (opens in new tab) has to offer and explain the directions in which we’re heading.

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Two WWW workshops—BigScholar (opens in new tab) and SAVE-SD (opens in new tab)—emphasize the variety of research emerging specifically as a result of the availability of the MAG data. In the BigScholar workshop, scientists Professor Roland Yap and Suhendry Effendy of the National University of Singapore explain how they’ve used the MAG data set to explore a methodology for conference rating (opens in new tab). SAVE-SD (Semantics, Analytics, Visualisation: Enhancing Scholarly Data) will focus on bridging the gap between theoretical and practical aspects of scholarly data. In affiliation with the co-located BigData Innovators Gathering (BIG 2016 (opens in new tab)), the BIG 2016 Cup (opens in new tab) challenges researchers to produce a REST service endpoint that can verify whether a paper is written by a given author.

New research possibilities are exciting, but examples of the practical application of existing research are satisfying to hear about. This year, the Seoul Test of Time Award (opens in new tab) is being presented to LinkedIn scientist Dr. Badrul Sarwar and University of Minnesota professors George Karypis, Joseph Konstan, and John Riedl (posthumously) for their 2001 groundbreaking paper, “Item-based collaborative filtering recommendation algorithms.”   The process of selecting contenders for the award required that the nominating committee consider papers presented at all previous WWW conferences. The criteria for assessing the work of potential nominees were many and the papers themselves were dense. We were happy to learn that this tough task faced by the Test of Time nominating committee was made manageable by MAG, which the committee was able to use as part of their selection process. Sifting through 24 years’ worth of WWW conference papers was, it turns out, a perfect application of this data set.

If you’re at WWW this week, please visit us at booth 701 and tell us about your work and how you’ve been using our academic services. If you haven’t yet, we encourage you to use the Academic Knowledge API (opens in new tab) and participate in the upcoming KDD Cup 2016 Challenge. (opens in new tab)

Schedule of Microsoft Academic Workshops and Events, World Wide Web 2016*

*Visit the conference website (opens in new tab) to see the full WWW 2016 schedule, including all Microsoft Research offerings.

Learn more

• International World Wide Web Conference 2016 program at-a-glance (opens in new tab)
• Search for knowledge on the Microsoft Academic website (opens in new tab)
• Get the Microsoft Academic Graph (opens in new tab) data and use the API
• Microsoft Cognitive Services Knowledge APIs
  • Academic Knowledge API (opens in new tab)
  • Entity Linking Intelligence Service (opens in new tab)
  • Knowledge Exploration Service (opens in new tab)

Check out WWW coverage and other conference news at Research News (opens in new tab)