Effective search and exploitation of electromagnetic knowledge in the Web

We all are aware of the huge amount of electromagnetic information and knowledge available in the Web, both in the form of PDF scientific papers, and in other forms (e.g., software, datasets). Similarly, we all have experienced the frustration of searching the Web for papers and other information, and getting useless or unsatisfactory results. All these limitations clearly demonstrate that information technologies (IT) need further progress so as to improve the efficiency of the mentioned processes. Indeed, there is fervid activity around this goal, and some interesting achievements have begun to appear in terms of search effectiveness and navigation satisfaction. Novel formats for representing scientific-paper contents are proposed, enhancing machine processing capability. However, embracing the new information technology proposals requires a cultural change from authors and from editors, and we cannot take it for granted that it will happen in the near future. Moreover, already-published papers should not be left out from approaching Web innovations. In this paper, we therefore focus both on the emerging technologies for generating more searchable files, and on those technologies allowing the transformation of existing PDF files into more-effective formats. These technologies need to be customized to each specific domain, thus rendering the codification of specific electromagnetic (EM) concepts of paramount importance. A use case is proposed on a specific EM example, so as to demonstrate the viability and effectiveness of the proposed approach.