patents

Examples of the disclosure are directed to systems and methods of using natural language processing techniques to automatically assign metadata to articles as they are published. The automatically-assigned metadata can then feed into the algorithms that calculate updated causation scores for agent-outcome hypotheses, powering live visualizations of the data that update automatically as new scientific articles become available.

According to embodiments of the present disclosure, there is provided a solution for reading order detection in a document. In the solution, a computer-implemented method includes: determining a text sequence and layout information presented in a document, the text sequence comprising a plurality of text elements, the layout information indicating a spatial layout of the plurality of text elements in the document; generating a plurality of semantic feature representations corresponding to the plurality of text elements based at least on the text sequence and the layout information; and determining a reading order of the plurality of text elements in the document based on the plurality of semantic feature representations. According to the solution, the introduction of the layout information can better characterize a spatial layout manner of the text elements in a specific document, thereby determining the reading order more effectively and accurately.