A web-based and computer-implemented method comprising the steps of
- providing a machine comprising a combination of specialized software modules, a database storing a library of research service objects and a website coupled to the database, with machine instructions in the specialized software module(s) directing the following further steps of the claimed method:
- storing information relating to at least one of a plurality of research services, research service providers and research service facilities in the database;
- providing a user access to the machine via the website;
- determining a user-specified goal based on user input about choice of a studied-system domain, the studied system having components and dynamic relationships between components, and further user settings from the group consisting of goal type and sub-goal type, budget, deadline and relevant domain database source, wherein the user-specified goal relates to testing, scientifically, in an experiment chamber, an hypothesis that will have a stronger probability than other potential hypotheses to lead to a next experimental result that, more quickly and efficiently, would be more likely to reduce uncertainty in prior knowledge about studied-system components and relationships between the studied-system components;
- assembling, via a knowledge-base-assembly software module responsive to a user's input choice of studied-system, a knowledge-base-assembly comprising a graph-based, causal-network computer model related to at least a sub-system of the studied system,
- enabling and constraining forward simulation of the graph-based, causal-network computer model, by a device, to reveal effects from upstream perturbations on downstream behavior in the studied system by using time-dynamic data, energy parameters, material balances and thermodynamic variables from the group comprising temperature, Gibbs free energy, enthalpy, entropy, electrical potential and chemical exchanges,
- constructing automatically, by a device, a research goal statement based on the user-specified goal selection, the statement having parameter settings that enable gathering expert information from a studied-system domain manual related to the components and relationships between components in the studied system,
- transforming, by a device, the research goal statement into a declarative statement of information that is needed to reduce uncertainty in the knowledge assembly by evaluating a studied-system knowledge model in view of the research goal statement and
- by analyzing the highest probability path to reduce a gap in information that corresponds with uncertainty in the knowledge assembly;
- accessing, by a computing device, a library of research service objects stored in a database, a research service software object corresponding to a research service comprised of one or more research service procedures or protocols and the research service object further having one or more software class properties, the properties comprising a value-of-information measure related to a probability of an expected outcome for one or more of the procedures or protocols of a research service that is represented by the research service software object;
- evaluating, by a computer device, at least two research service objects having class properties incorporating a measure of probability that the corresponding research service can achieve a specified research goal;
- selecting, automatically by a computer device, one or more research services, based on the services providing procedures or protocols likely to produce experimental results to reduce uncertainty in the knowledge assembly,
- displaying via one or more web pages a presentation of offered research services from the database, the presentation being a derived subset of the plurality of research services stored in the database, enabling a customer or potential customer to choose a research service from the displayed subset of research services derived by the specialized software module(s).