Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research

Provenance and family variation in seed mass and fruit composition in <I>Sclerocarya birrea </I>sub-species caffra

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Quantities and values of selected forest foods harvested by eight villages adjacent to natural woodlands in the four ecological zones of rural Swaziland

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Towards a theoretical framework for the management of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) in Swaziland: A review

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Towards The Improvement of Policy and Strategy Development for the Sustainable Management on Non-Timber Forest Products: Swaziland- A Case Study

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A resource survey for medicinal and edible plant species in the four ecological zones of rural Swaziland

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The socioeconomic status of the non-timber forest product subsector in Swaziland

A wide spectrum of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) generally has a remarkable contribution to the household economy in rural areas. Most communities make a living either through their domestic or commercial use. The objective of this study was to review the current status of the NTFP sector and further compile an up-to-date list of major use categories of NTFPs. The review of the national study on the NTFP sector indicate an average annual value of the selected NTFPs groups of between US$19.8 million and US$79 million with a median value of US$49.38 million. The most important group from an economic point of view is medicinal plants with an average annual value of US$32.1 million, followed by fuel wood with an estimated annual value of  US$13.5 million. In the natural accounting study it was revealed that  the contribution of natural forests and woodlands in flow benefits, including the highlighted NTFPs, was equivalent to 2.2% of the total GDP, 20% of agriculture’s GDP and 439% of the contribution of forestry  reported in the national accounts for 2000. This current study reviewed past national, regional and international studies and developed a new list of 19 NTFP use categories subdivided into direct, indirect and intermediate uses. Subsequently, a matrix of commonly used botanical NTFPs was designed and includes most highly preferred species such as Sclerocarya birrea, Bauhinia galpinii, Berchemia zeyheri, Dichrostachys cinerea and others. However, the study concluded that there is still a profound lack of information on the status and total value of NTFPs in Swaziland and recommended that government, NGOs, the private sector, communities, and other interested and affected parties (including resource users) should work together to conduct research in order to generate, compile and disseminate information on the quantitative and qualitative statistical data on NTFPs, their socioeconomic uses and ecological and environmental values. Keywords: economic valuation; plant species; sustainable management; use categoriesSouthern Forests 2009, 71(4): 311–31