Abstract: Writing a scientific paper is not a trivial
task. Word processors help facilitating this task in many ways,
especially in formatting the text layout and spell checking. However,
most of word processor lack specific tools for helping authors
organize their ideas, i.e. handle semantically their articles.
Although in some specific domains, for exampling screen play writing,
applications other than word processor have been developed to do
this, unfortunately in academic writing there is still work be be
done. Some minor tools, such as those helping authors with the
management of bibliographic references were lacking in word
processors even until recently, and authors had purchase separately.
One of the most interesting aspects of OpenOffice suite for academics
is of course its powerful bibliography management database. But
still, it is difficult to say we can handle with ease our ideas in
this suite. Another capability of OpenOffice is its extended use of
XML files in Open Document Format (ODF). This is an interesting
aspect which allows the management of the content of a document
independently from its layout and style. The author has developed an
ontology of a scientific article OWL language. Based on this
ontology, named Paper Element Nodes (PEN), a scientific paper has a
type, a style, a content, a version and a cover letter. A scientific
paper type can be any of editorial, research paper, review article,
case report, analysis article, methodology article, and so on. Its
style can include layout styles, references styles, language styles,
and illustration styles. Its the content, which conveys the core
meaning of the article, can also be divided into several parts which
are called nodes in our model. The main nodes of the content of a
scientific paper include: title page, abstract, introduction,
methods, results, discussion, tables, illustrations, legends for
illustrations, etc. Each of these nodes are further divided into sub
nodes. For example the title page includes the title of the article,
author names and affiliations, author roles, acknowledgements,
disclaimers, number of tables and illustrations, word count and the
address of corresponding and reprints authors. All these nodes and
their subdivisions are coded in OWL DL language in the original PEN
ontology. During this session, the author demonstrates how these
concepts can be directly implemented in an OpenOffice template. The
final result will be a template document which is ready to be used
for writing a scientific paper. This makes possible to write a
scientific article with much less effort. As a medical informatics
graduate, the author will demonstrate how this newly created template
can be used to facilitate the writing of a scientific paper about a
clinical trial study. So far, the author shows that the ODF has the
capability of presenting a semantic structure of a scientific
article. This is beneficial for academic writers by helping them
prepare well-structured manuscripts. Another more important benefit
of using this kind of ontology based template is the fact that search
engines of tomorrow can be able to parse scientific articles in a
semantic way. For example they will be able to search all articles
using OpenOffice and ODF in their methods. A progress which will make
us closer to Web 3.0 concept.