Research Contributions: Towards a Formal and Semantic Representation

Moving beyond the high-level metadata available in bibliographic databases is essential to achieve a richer, more accurate representation of research paper content. Current retrieval and evaluation frameworks rely heavily on basic structural attributes, which fail to capture the nature and intrinsic value of scholarly contributions. To this end, we propose a joint community effort with the workshop audience to collaboratively design and refine a dedicated Research Contribution Ontology. We believe establishing this domain-independent semantic model will provide new and better ways to retrieve content, and fundamentally transform scientific evaluation, supporting qualitative assessment frameworks that move beyond canonical, purely quantitative metrics. In this vision paper, we argue that the time is ripe for this evolution. With the rapid expansion of open-access literature, mature parsing software, and LLMs capable of structured extraction, we now possess both the data and technology. What is missing is the formal semantic representation to link these capabilities together. We present an initial core ontology outline as a concrete foundation for collective development and future integration into scholarly knowledge graphs.