The unification of institutional addresses applying parametrized finite-state graphs (P-FSG)

We propose a semi-automatic method based on finite-state techniques for the unification of corporate source data, with potential applications for bibliometric purposes. Bibliographic and citation databases have a well-known problem of inconsistency in the data at micro-level and meso-level, affecting the quality of bibliometric searches and the evaluation of research performance. The unification method applies parametrized finite-state graphs (P-FSG) and involves three stages: (1) breaking of corporate source data in independent units of analysis; (2) creation of binary matrices; and (3) drawing finite-state graphs. This procedure was tested on university departmental addresses, downloaded from the ISI Web of Science. Evaluation was in terms of an adaptation of the measures of precision and recall. The results demonstrate the usefulness of this approach, though it requires some human processing.