U-Compare bio-event meta-service: compatible BioNLP event extraction services

Background: Bio-molecular event extraction from literature is recognized as an important task of bio text mining and, as such, many relevant systems have been developed and made available during the last decade. While such systems provide useful services individually, there is a need for a meta-service to enable comparison and ensemble of such services, offering optimal solutions for various purposes. Results: We have integrated nine event extraction systems in the U-Compare framework, making them intercompatible and interoperable with other U-Compare components. The U-Compare event meta-service provides various meta-level features for comparison and ensemble of multiple event extraction systems. Experimental results show that the performance improvements achieved by the ensemble are significant. Conclusions: While individual event extraction systems themselves provide useful features for bio text mining, the U-Compare meta-service is expected to improve the accessibility to the individual systems, and to enable metalevel uses over multiple event extraction systems such as comparison and ensemble.