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Construction of personal knowledge maps for a peer-to-peer information-sharing environment

Chunxiu Qin (Department of Information Management, Xidian University, Xi’an, China)
Pengwei Zhao (Department of Information Management, Xidian University, Xi’an, China)
Jian Mou (Department of Information Management, Xidian University, Xi’an, China)
Jin Zhang (School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA)

The Electronic Library

ISSN: 0264-0473

Article publication date: 1 June 2018

Issue publication date: 11 June 2018

561

Abstract

Purpose

Browsing knowledge documents in a peer-to-peer (P2P) environment is difficult because knowledge documents in such an environment are large in quantity and distributed over different peers who organize the documents according to their own views. This paper aims to propose a method for constructing a personal knowledge map for a peer to facilitate knowledge browsing and alleviate information overload in P2P environments.

Design/methodology/approach

The research presents a method for constructing a personal knowledge map. The method adopts an ontology-concept-tree-based classification algorithm to recognize a peer’s personal knowledge structure and construct a personal knowledge map, and uses a self-organizing map algorithm to cluster and visualize the knowledge documents. The correctness of the created knowledge map is evaluated with a collection of abstracts of academic papers.

Findings

The method for constructing a personal knowledge map is the main finding of this research. The evaluation shows that the created knowledge map is good in quality.

Research limitations/implications

The proposed method provides a way for P2P platforms to understand their users’ knowledge background, as well as to improve the P2P platform environment. However, the proposed method will not help a peer when he has nothing in his individual knowledge document repository (i.e. the “cold start” problem). The method also requires a relatively good ontology base for a P2P document sharing system to use the method effectively.

Originality/value

It is novel that the proposed method organizes the knowledge documents related to a peer’s knowledge background into a personal knowledge map. Moreover, the created knowledge map combines the advantages of a hierarchical display and a map display. It has values for a distributed P2P environment to facilitate users’ knowledge browsing and to alleviate information overload.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71103138 and 71573199). The authors would like to acknowledge the hard word and assistance of Huimin Zhao at the Sheldon B. Lubar School of Business, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Xiaoyue Ma at the School of Economics and Management, Xidian University. The authors would also like to thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments.

Citation

Qin, C., Zhao, P., Mou, J. and Zhang, J. (2018), "Construction of personal knowledge maps for a peer-to-peer information-sharing environment", The Electronic Library, Vol. 36 No. 3, pp. 394-413. https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-03-2017-0071

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited

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