The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series (Jan 2024)
pathfinder: A Semantic Framework for Literature Review and Knowledge Discovery in Astronomy
- Kartheik G. Iyer,
- Mikaeel Yunus,
- Charles O’Neill,
- Christine Ye,
- Alina Hyk,
- Kiera McCormick,
- Ioana Ciucă,
- John F. Wu,
- Alberto Accomazzi,
- Simone Astarita,
- Rishabh Chakrabarty,
- Jesse Cranney,
- Anjalie Field,
- Tirthankar Ghosal,
- Michele Ginolfi,
- Marc Huertas-Company,
- Maja Jabłońska,
- Sandor Kruk,
- Huiling Liu,
- Gabriel Marchidan,
- Rohit Mistry,
- J. P. Naiman,
- J. E. G. Peek,
- Mugdha Polimera,
- Sergio J. Rodríguez Méndez,
- Kevin Schawinski,
- Sanjib Sharma,
- Michael J. Smith,
- Yuan-Sen Ting,
- Mike Walmsley,
- UniverseTBD
Affiliations
- Kartheik G. Iyer
- ORCiD
- Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, Columbia University , 550 West 120th Street, New York, NY 10027, USA ; [email protected]
- Mikaeel Yunus
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University , 3400 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- Charles O’Neill
- ORCiD
- School of Computing, The Australian National University , 108 North Road, Acton ACT 2601, Australia
- Christine Ye
- ORCiD
- Stanford University , 450 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
- Alina Hyk
- ORCiD
- School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Oregon State University , 1500 SW Jefferson Way, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA
- Kiera McCormick
- ORCiD
- Department of Engineering, Loyola University Maryland , 4501 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21210, USA
- Ioana Ciucă
- ORCiD
- Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Australian National University , Cotter Road, Weston, ACT 2611, Australia; School of Computing, Australian National University , Acton, ACT 2601, Australia; Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology and Department of Physics, Stanford University , Stanford, CA 94305, USA
- John F. Wu
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University , 3400 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA; Space Telescope Science Institute , 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- Alberto Accomazzi
- ORCiD
- Center for Astrophysics , Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
- Simone Astarita
- ORCiD
- European Space Agency (ESA) , European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC), Camino Bajo del Castillo s/n, 28692 Villanueva de la Cañada, Madrid, Spain
- Rishabh Chakrabarty
- Independent Researcher, Paris, France
- Jesse Cranney
- ORCiD
- Astralis-AITC—Stromlo, RSAA, Australian National University , Cotter Road, Weston, ACT2600, Australia
- Anjalie Field
- ORCiD
- Department of Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University , 3400 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- Tirthankar Ghosal
- ORCiD
- National Center for Computational Sciences , Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA
- Michele Ginolfi
- ORCiD
- Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Universita di Firenze , Via G. Sansone 1, 50019, Sesto Fiorentino (Firenze), Italy; INAF—Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri , Largo E. Fermi 5, I-50125, Firenze, Italy
- Marc Huertas-Company
- ORCiD
- Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias , C. Via Lactea, 1, E-38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain; Universidad de la Laguna , Dept. Astrofisica, E-38206 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain; Universite Paris-Cite , LERMA—Observatoire de Paris, PSL, Paris, France; SCIPP, University of California , Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA
- Maja Jabłońska
- Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Australian National University , Cotter Road, Weston, ACT 2611, Australia
- Sandor Kruk
- ORCiD
- European Space Agency (ESA) , European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC), Camino Bajo del Castillo s/n, 28692 Villanueva de la Cañada, Madrid, Spain
- Huiling Liu
- Key Laboratory for Research in Galaxies and Cosmology, Department of Astronomy, University of Science and Technology of China , Hefei, Anhui 230026, People's Republic of China; School of Astronomy and Space Science, University of Science and Technology of China , Hefei 230026, People's Republic of China
- Gabriel Marchidan
- Iaşi AI , Iaşi, Romania
- Rohit Mistry
- Xaana AI , Canberra, Australia
- J. P. Naiman
- ORCiD
- School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois , Urbana-Champaign, IL 61820, USA
- J. E. G. Peek
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University , 3400 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA; Space Telescope Science Institute , 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- Mugdha Polimera
- ORCiD
- Center for Astrophysics , Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
- Sergio J. Rodríguez Méndez
- ORCiD
- School of Computing, The Australian National University , 108 North Road, Acton ACT 2601, Australia
- Kevin Schawinski
- ORCiD
- Modulos AG, 8005 Zurich, Switzerland
- Sanjib Sharma
- ORCiD
- Space Telescope Science Institute , 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- Michael J. Smith
- ORCiD
- Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias , C. Via Lactea, 1, E-38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
- Yuan-Sen Ting
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy, The Ohio State University , Columbus, OH 43210, USA; Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics (CCAPP), The Ohio State University , Columbus, OH 43210, USA
- Mike Walmsley
- ORCiD
- Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto , 50 St. George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 3H4, Canada; Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Manchester , Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK
- UniverseTBD
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4365/ad7c43
- Journal volume & issue
-
Vol. 275,
no. 2
p. 38
Abstract
The exponential growth of astronomical literature poses significant challenges for researchers navigating and synthesizing general insights or even domain-specific knowledge. We present pathfinder , a machine learning framework designed to enable literature review and knowledge discovery in astronomy, focusing on semantic searching with natural language instead of syntactic searches with keywords. Utilizing state-of-the-art large language models (LLMs) and a corpus of 385,166 peer-reviewed papers from the Astrophysics Data System, pathfinder offers an innovative approach to scientific inquiry and literature exploration. Our framework couples advanced retrieval techniques with LLM-based synthesis to search astronomical literature by semantic context as a complement to currently existing methods that use keywords or citation graphs. It addresses complexities of jargon, named entities, and temporal aspects through time-based and citation-based weighting schemes. We demonstrate the tool’s versatility through case studies, showcasing its application in various research scenarios. The system’s performance is evaluated using custom benchmarks, including single-paper and multipaper tasks. Beyond literature review, pathfinder offers unique capabilities for reformatting answers in ways that are accessible to various audiences (e.g., in a different language or as simplified text), visualizing research landscapes, and tracking the impact of observatories and methodologies. This tool represents a significant advancement in applying artificial intelligence to astronomical research, aiding researchers at all career stages in navigating modern astronomy literature.
Keywords
- Astronomical reference materials
- Astronomy web services
- History of astronomy
- Computational methods
- Astronomy data visualization
