Using Frame Hierarchy to Represent the Paper-Review Process

Frame-based representation [5] is an appropriate hierarchical structure based upon object-oriented concept to describe stereotyped objects. A frame can contain slots, attached procedures, and rules. Each slot can have a default value and a slot value to represent the object’s attribute. The attached procedures and rules, expressing the embedded logics among slots in single or multiple frames, can be triggered in the following common conditions:

if-need: the procedure is triggered while retrieving a slot value but a default value is not available.

if-added: the procedure is triggered while storing a value in a slot.

if-changed: the procedure is triggered while the slot value is changed if-removed: the procedure is triggered while the slot value is removed

A frame can be inherited by other frames, which can have all slots contained by its parent frame and instanced to generate a frame instance. The relations of inheriting and instancing are named a-kind-of and is-a, respectively.

This thesis used two kinds of frames, named Resource Frame and Action Frame, to represent the knowledge of used resources and the users’ possible actions.

A resource-frame hierarchy and action-frame hierarchy are shown in Figure 3.2(a) and 3.2(b) (c) (d) respectively. For Figure 3.2(a), all users were described by the Role frame hierarchy in this thesis. There were two Roles in the system: User and Administrator. The former is the end-user in the output paper-review system and the

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latter is the one who has the privilege to configure their paper-review process. The User in the output paper-review system consisted of Editor, Reviewer, and Author. For the File frame hierarchy, it can be divided into different types such as Paper frames, the Paper Attachment File frame, etc. according to their different purposes.

Figure 3.2(a): Role and File Resource Frame Hierarchy

Different with resource structure, the action frame hierarchy defined the actions might be performed by end-users in the output paper-review system. Each leaf node of this hierarchy might be a kind of its parent action frame. The action frame contained the configuration information of the action. It might have some default value or some procedure attachment. When user configure his/her paper-review system, action frames’ slot values would change correspondingly. For example, when user configured the New Submit action, she/he would define the information which end-user should provide. Moreover, when user configured the Review action, she/he should define the criteria for evaluating papers.

Figure 3.2(b): Paper Manipulate Action Frame Hierarchy

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Figure 3.2(c): User Management Action Frame Hierarchy

Figure 3.2(d): Message Controlling Action Frame Hierarchy

The definitions of resource frames and action frames, which would be used when we illustrated the action control management approach in Chapter 4 and defined our knowledge acquisition model in Chapter 5, were stated as follows

Definition 1: The Resource Frame is a 5-tuple: RF = (FN, FR, S, VR, DL) where

(a) FN: The name of this resource frame

(b) FR= (T, FN): The relation between this resource frame with other resource frame, where T is the type of relation. It may be a-kind-of relation which denoted the inheritance relation and is-a relation which denoted instantiation relation.

(c) S={(SNi, SVi, STi, DVi, PAi, FAi) |for all i, 1<= i < n}: The finite set of slot information in this resource frame. It is a 6-tuple, where

 SNi: The name of the i-th slot. It stands for the attribute name of this resource

 SVi: The value of the i-th slot. It stands for the attribute value of this resource

 STi: The data type of the i-th slot. It can be string, integer, or float

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 DV_i: The default value of the i-th slot. If it is non-empty, the SV_i is assigned when new resource frame instance is generated.

 PAi = {(T_j, P_j, PR_j) | for all j, 0 <=j<4}: The finite set of procedure attachments of the i-th slot, where T_j is the type of this procedure attachment. It may be if-need, if-changed, if-added, or if-removed. PRj

is the set of parameters of this attached procedure.

 FAi: The finite set of frame attachment of the i-th slot. When it is not null, it represent that this slot’s value will be a set of other frames

(d) VR: The finite set of resource verification rules. When system tried to add a resource, it would trigger resource verification rules to check this new resource is valid or not. The detail definition of resource verification rules would state in Section 3.2

(e) DL: The link to the specific database table, where stored the data generated with this resource frame definition. For the leaf frame in the resource frame hierarchy, DL will not be null.

Definition 2: The Action Frame is a 4-tuple: AF = (FN, FR, S, FC) where (a) FN: The name of this action frame

(b) FR=(T, FN): The relation between this action frame with other action frame, where T is the type of relation. It may be a-kind-of relation which denoted the inheritance relation and is-a relation which denoted instantiation relation.

(c) S={(SNi, SVi, STi, DVi, PAi) |for all i, 1<= i < n}: The finite set of slot information in this action frame. It is a 6-tuple, where

 SNi : The name of the i-th slot. It stands for the configuration item of this assigned when new action frame instance is generated. For all DVi in S, it stands for a stereotype about this action.

 PAi = {(Tj, Pj, PRj) | for all j, 0 <=j<4}: The finite set of procedure attachments of the i-th slot, where Tj is the type of this procedure attachment. It may be if-need, if-changed, if-added, or if-removed. PRj

is the set of parameter of this attached procedure.

(d) FC : The finite set of facts that would be triggered after this action frame

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The difference of physical meaning between resource frames and action frames is that end-users may generate the data based on the structure of resource frame, and the inference engine may infer rules after end-users performed the action defined by action frame.

Example 3.1: The resource frame and action frame

Two examples of the usage of resource frames and action frames were shown in Figure 3.3(a) and Figure 3.3(b), respectively. In Figure 3.3(a), in addition to the slots in File frame, the Paper frame consisted the information about the papers. A Reviewed Paper had the information of reviewer and review result. In Figure 3.3(b), when a reviewer reviewed paper, the reviewer could suggest the paper state of judge result and sent the review result back to editor.

Figure 3.3(a): The “File-Paper-ReviewPaper” resource frame hierarchy

Figure 3.3(b): The “Review-ReviewerReview” action frame hierarchy

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