Biomedical articles share annotations with their citation neighbors

BackgroundNumerous efforts have been poured into annotating the wealth of knowledge contained in biomedical articles. Thanks to such efforts, it is now possible to quantitatively explore relations between these annotations and the citation network at large scale.ResultsWith the aid of several large and small annotation databases, this study shows that articles share annotations with their citation neighborhood to the point that the neighborhood's most common annotations are likely to be those appearing in the article.ConclusionsThese findings posit that an article's citation neighborhood defines to a large extent the article's annotated content. Thus, citations should be considered as a foundation for future knowledge management and annotation of biomedical articles.

Automated summary

Through studying the relationship between annotations in biomedical articles and citation networks, it is found that an article's citation neighborhood plays a significant role in defining the annotated content of the article. This suggests that citations should be considered as a crucial foundation for future knowledge management and annotation of biomedical articles.