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Auto-CORPus

DOI:10.1101/2021.01.08.425887 DOI:10.3389/fdgth.2022.788124 License: GPL v3 pre-commit.ci status

Requires Python 3.10+

The Automated pipeline for Consistent Outputs from Research Publications (Auto-CORPus) is a tool for the standardisation and conversion of publication HTML to three convenient machine-interpretable outputs to support biomedical text analytics. Firstly, Auto-CORPus can be configured to convert HTML from various publication sources to BioC format. Secondly, Auto-CORPus transforms publication tables to a JSON format to store, exchange and annotate table data between text analytics systems. Finally, Auto-CORPus extracts abbreviations declared within publication text and provides an abbreviations JSON output that relates an abbreviation with the full definition.

We present a JSON format for sharing table content and metadata that is based on the BioC format. The JSON schema for the tables JSON can be found within the keyfiles directory.

Installation

Install with pip

pip install autocorpus

Usage

Run the below command for a single file example

auto-corpus -c "autocorpus/configs/config_pmc.json" -t "output" -f "path/to/html/file" -o JSON

Run the main app for a directory of files example

auto-corpus -c "autocorpus/configs/config_pmc.json" -t "output" -f "path/to/directory/of/html/files" -o JSON

Available arguments

Flag Name Description
-f Input File Path File or directory to run Auto-CORPus on
-t Output File Path Directory path where Auto-CORPus should save output files
-c Config Which config file to use
-o Output Format Either JSON or XML (defaults to JSON)

Config files

If you wish to contribute or edit a config file then please follow the instructions in the config guide.

Auto-CORPus is able to parse HTML from different publishers, which utilise different HTML structures and naming conventions. This is made possible by the inclusion of config files which tell Auto-CORPus how to identify specific sections of the article/table within the source HTML. We have supplied a config template along with example config files for PubMed Central, Plos Genetics and Nature Genetics in the configs directory. Users of Auto-CORPus can submit their own config files for different sources via the issues tab.

Auto-CORPus recognises 2 types of input file which are:

  • Full text HTML documents covering the entire article
  • HTML files which describe a single table

Current work in progress is extending this to include images of tables. See the Alpha Testing section below.

Auto-CORPus does not provide functionality to retrieve input files directly from the publisher. Input file retrieval must be completed by the user in a way which the publisher permits.

Auto-CORPus relies on a standard naming convention to recognise the files and identify the correct order of tables. The naming convention can be seen below:

Full article HTML: {any_name_you_want}.html

  • {any_name_you_want} is how Auto-CORPus will group articles and linked tables/image files

Linked table HTML: {any_name_you_want}_table_X.html

  • {any_name_you_want} must be identical to the name given to the full text file followed by_table_X where X is the table number

If passing a single file via the file path then that file will be processed in the most suitable manner, if a directory is passed then Auto-CORPus will first group files based on common elements in their file name {any_name_you_want} and process all related files at once. Related files in separate directories will not be processed at the same time. Files processed at the same time will be output into the same files, an example input and output directory can be seen below:

Input:

PMC1.html
PMC1_table_1.html
PMC1_table_2.html
/subdir
    PMC1_table_3.html
    PMC1_table_4.html

Output:

PMC1_bioc.json
PMC1_abbreviations.json
PMC1_tables.json (contains table 1 & 2 and any tables described within the main text)
/subdir
    PMC1_tables.json (contains tables 3 & 4 only)

A log file is produced in the output directory providing details of the day/time Auto-CORPus was run, the arguments used and information about which files were successfully/unsuccessfully processed with a relevant error message.

For developers

This is a Python application that uses poetry for packaging and dependency management. It also provides pre-commit hooks for various linters and formatters and automated tests using pytest and GitHub Actions.

To get started:

  1. Download and install Poetry following the instructions for your OS.

  2. Clone this repository and make it your working directory

  3. Set up the virtual environment:

    poetry install

  4. Activate the virtual environment (alternatively, ensure any Python-related command is preceded by poetry run):

    poetry shell

  5. Install the git hooks:

    pre-commit install

  6. Run the main app for a single file example:

    python -m autocorpus -c "autocorpus/configs/config_pmc.json" -t "output" -f "path/to/html/file" -o JSON

  7. Run the main app for a directory of files example

    python -m autocorpus -c "autocorpus/configs/config_pmc.json" -t "output" -f "path/to/directory/of/html/files" -o JSON

Note: The auto-corpus commandline script is also available and will behave the same as python -m autocorpus

Alpha testing

We are developing an Auto-CORPus plugin to process images of tables and we include an alpha version of this functionality. Table image files can be processed in either .png or .jpeg/jpg formats. We are working on improving the accuracy of both the table layout and character recognition aspects, and we will update this repo as the plugin advances.

We utilise opencv for cell detection and tesseract for optical character recognition. Tesseract will need to be installed separately onto your system for the table image recognition aspect of Auto-CORPus to work. Please follow the guidance given by tesseract on how to do this.

We have made trained datasets available for use with this feature, but we will continue to train these datasets to increase their accuracy, and it is very likely that the trained datasets we offer will be updated frequently during active development periods.

As with HTML input files, the image input files should be retrieved by the user in a way which the publisher permits. The naming convention is:

Table image file: {any_name_you_want}_table_X.png/jpg/jpeg

  • {any_name_you_want} must be identical to the name given to the full text file followed by_table_X where X is the table number

Additional argument

Flag Name Description
-s Trained Dataset Trained dataset to use for pytesseract OCR. Value should be given in a format recognised by pytesseract with a "+" between each datafile, such as "eng+all"