ONLINE PUBLICATION SYSTEM AND METHOD

• US 20160232143A1
• Filed: 02/10/2016
• Published: 08/11/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 02/10/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: ResearchGATE GmbH
• Original Assignee: ResearchGATE GmbH
• Inventors: Kelly, Niall, Alvares, Darren, Fickenscher, Horst, Zholudev, Vyacheslav, Mansfield, Stephen
• Granted Patent: US 10,733,256 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/1794 Details of file format conversion
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/22 Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2255 Hash tables
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/245 Query processing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/248 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/258 Data format conversion from or to a database
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/93 Document management systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/955 using information identifiers, e.g. uniform resource locators [URL]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0482 Interaction with lists of selectable items, e.g. menus
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04842 Selection of displayed objects or displayed text elements G06F3/0482 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/117 Tagging; Marking up details of markup languages G06F40/143; Designating a block; Setting of attributes style sheets, e.g. eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformation [XSLT], G06F40/154
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/123 Storage facilities
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/14 Tree-structured documents parsing G06F40/205; validation G06F40/226
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/143 Markup, e.g. Standard Generalized Markup Language [SGML] or Document Type Definition [DTD]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/166 Editing, e.g. inserting or deleting
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/169 Annotation, e.g. comment data or footnotes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/197 Version control for software G06F8/71
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/20 Natural language analysis semantic analysis of natural language G06F40/30
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/205 Parsing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/221 : Parsing markup language streams streaming G06F40/149

Abstract

Various systems and methods for creating, storing, structuring, displaying, enhancing, and/or referencing publications and related content in an online user network are described. In some embodiments, documents are stored in the form of individually addressable document elements in conjunction with an ordered list of the document elements. Updates to a document can then be analyzed to identify omissions of document elements and/or additions of new document elements, which can be reflected in an updated list of document elements.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

at a publication server,

receiving a document;

analyzing contents of the document to identify a plurality of document elements that collectively constitute the contents of the document, and storing entries for the document elements in a database;

creating a first document view representing the document as a list of the plurality of document elements;

associating a first version identifier with the first document view;

receiving an update to the document;

analyzing the update to identify one or more document-element omissions or additions that collectively constitute the update, and, responsive to identifying any one or more added document elements, storing entries for the added document elements in the database;

creating a second document view representing the document as modified by the received update as an updated list of document elements, the updated list including all added document elements, if any, and not including any omitted document elements; and

associating a second version identifier with the second document view.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the first and second version identifiers are based on hashes of document-element identifiers associated with the document elements listed in the first and second document views, respectively.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving an annotation to the document, the annotation being associated with one or more document elements listed for the first document view, but not the second document view.

4. The method of claim 3, further comprising, in response to user selection of one of the first or second views, creating a user interface screen comprising the document elements listed in the selected view and comprising the annotation only in response to selection of the first view.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising associating time stamps with the first and second versions.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving further updates to the document;

repeating the analyzing, creating, and associating actions for each of the further updates; and

generating a history of the document based on the first document view and the document views created for the respective updates.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein analyzing the update comprises analyzing the updated document to identify document elements that collectively constitute the contents of the updated document, and comparing the identified document elements against the document elements listed in the first document view.

8. A system comprising:

one or more databases storing, for each of one or more documents, (i) database entries for a plurality of respective document elements collectively constituting contents of the document, and (ii) a document view comprising an ordered list of the document elements, the document view having an associated version identifier; and

one or more processor-implemented modules configured to

analyze an update to the document to identify one or more document-element omissions or additions that collectively constitute the update, and, responsive to identifying any one or more added document elements, store entries for the added document elements in the database;

create a second document view representing the document as modified by the received update as an updated list of document elements, the updated list including any added document elements and not including any omitted document elements; and

associate a second version identifier with the second document view.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the one or more processor-implemented modules are configured to compute the first and second version identifiers based on hashes of document-element identifiers associated with the document elements listed in the first and second document views, respectively.

10. The system of claim 8, wherein the one or more processor-implemented modules are further configured to receive an annotation to one or more document elements listed for the first document view, but not the second document view.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein the one or more processor-implemented modules are further configured create, in response to user selection of one of the first or second views, a user interface screen comprising the document elements listed in the selected view and comprising the annotation only in response to selection of the first view.

12. The system of claim 8, wherein the one or more processor-implemented modules are further configured to associate time stamps with the first and second versions.

13. The system of claim 8, wherein the one or more processor-implemented modules are further configured to generate a history of the document based on the first document view and a plurality of document views created for a plurality of respective updates to the document.

14. The system of claim 8, wherein the one or more processor-implemented modules are configured to analyze the update by analyzing the updated document to identify document elements that collectively constitute the contents of the updated document, and comparing the identified document elements against the document elements listed in the first document view.

15. A non-transitory machine-readable medium storing instructions that, when executed by one or more hardware processors, cause the one or more hardware processors to:

in response to receipt of a document,

analyze contents of a document to identify a plurality of document elements that collectively constitute the contents of the document, and store entries for the document elements in a database;

create a first document view represe g the document as a list of the plurality of document elements; and

associate a first version identifier with the firs document view; and

in response to receipt of an update to the document,

analyze the update to identify one or more document-element omissions or additions that collectively constitute the update, and, responsive to identifying any one or more added document elements, store entries for the added document elements in the database;

create a second document view representing the document as modified by the received update as an updated list of document elements, the updated list including all added document elements, if any, and not including any omitted document elements; and

associate a second version identifier with the second document view.