The Discourse Graphs Starter Pack

Discourse Graphs are a tool which provide better infrastructure for scientific synthesis & communication

Discourse Graphs are an information model that enables researchers and communicators to map their ideas and arguments in a modular, composable graph format.

Better infrastructure for scientific synthesis & communication

Discourse Graphs are an information model that enables researchers and communicators to map their ideas and arguments in a modular, composable graph format.

Synthesize and Update

Discourse Graphs enable researchers to exchange knowledge in a form that makes it straightforward to construct, update, and view cross-disciplinary syntheses of what is known and unknown for any research problem or area of inquiry. Like Lego™️ bricks, the modular components of the Discourse Graphs data model make it easy to choose which parts of a scientific project you wish to share and build upon.

Client-Agnostic & Researcher-aligned

Discourse Graphs are a decentralized knowledge exchange protocol designed to be implemented and owned by researchers — rather than publishers — to share results at all stages of the scientific process. Discourse Graphs are client-agnostic with decentralized push-pull storage & and can be implemented in any networked notebook software (Roam, Notion, LogSeq, Obsidian, etc.) straight from a repo, allowing researchers to collaborate widely while working in the tool of their choice. Discourse Graphs support and incentivize knowledge sharing by making it easy to push to and pull from a shared knowledge graph — and to claim credit for many more types of contributions Discourse Graphs are like github for scientific communication.

The natural OS for a Cloud Laboratory

The flexible Discourse Graph framework has been adapted to communicate experimental concepts and practice, helping to bridge the gap between experimentalists & theoreticians and between bench scientists & computational scientists. Results Graphs — a Discourse Graph dialect — can be used to support

faster and deeper knowledge sharing and discovery
faster and broader collaboration, especially across scientific disciplines
better information transfer -- including transfer of tacit knowledge

➡️ which leads to better-executed experiments ↪️ and a faster discovery & innovation cycle

Resources

Discourse Graphs and the Future of Science by Matt Akamatsu and Evan Miyazono, in conversation with Tom Kalil
Roam Research Discourse Graph extension documentation (contains additional useful links)
Knowledge synthesis: A conceptual model and practical guide
Joel Chan on Scaling Synthesis
blogpost on Deep Science Ventures’ Outcomes Graph

Joel Chan, Rob Haisfield, and Brendan Langen on the role of context in synthesis

Joel Chan, Rob Haisfield, and Brendan Langen on the role of context in synthesis
Joel Chan on Sustainable Authorship Models for a Discourse-Based Scholarly Communication Infrastructure
Cybrarian Michael Gartner’s Discourse Graph template - get cracking building your graphs!

Past Talks

PL Research seminar featuring Joel Chan on Accelerating Scientific Discovery with Discourse Graphs:

Funding the Commons NYC talk on using D/Graphs to map investments in public goods:

Events coming soon!

Get involved: The Discourse Graph Index

Are you working in public with Discourse Graphs? Join the discussion on Discord, or reach out to us by email to share a link to your graph. We’re building an index of public discourse graphs to help onboard folks to the protocol, explore novel uses cases, and accelerate development. Links to both read/write and read-only graphs are welcome!