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Literature-based discovery


Literature-based discovery refers to the use of papers and other academic publications (the "literature") to find new relationships between existing knowledge (the "discovery"). The technique was pioneered by Don R. Swanson in the 1980s and has since seen widespread use.

Literature-based discovery does not generate new knowledge through laboratory experiments, as is customary for empirical sciences. Instead it seeks to connect existing knowledge from empirical results by bringing to light relationships that are implicated and "neglected". It is marked by empiricism and rationalism in concert or consilience.

Swanson linking is a term proposed in 2003 that refers to connecting two pieces of knowledge previously thought to be unrelated. For example, it may be known that illness A is caused by chemical B, and that drug C is known to reduce the amount of chemical B in the body. However, because the respective articles were published separately from one another (called "disjoint data"), the relationship between illness A and drug C may be unknown. Swanson linking aims to find these relationships and report them.



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