Towards a machine-readable literature: finding relevant papers based on an uploaded powder diffraction pattern

We investigate a prototype application for machine-readable literature. The program is called "pyDataRecognition" and serves as an example of a data-driven literature search, where the literature search query is an experimental data-set provided by the user. The user uploads a powder pattern together with the radiation wavelength. The program compares the user data to a database of existing powder patterns associated with published papers and produces a rank ordered according to their similarity score. The program returns the digital object identifier (doi) and full reference of top ranked papers together with a stack plot of the user data alongside the top five database entries. The paper describes the approach and explores successes and challenges.