ARETE: an R package for Automated REtrieval from TExt with large language models

Fuente: arXiv
Enregistré dans:
Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs principaux: Branco, Vasco V., Benedek, Jandó, Pivovarova, Lidia, Correia, Luís, Cardoso, Pedro
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
Sujets:
Accès en ligne:
Tags: Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
_version_ 1866915602717736960
author Branco, Vasco V.
Benedek, Jandó
Pivovarova, Lidia
Correia, Luís
Cardoso, Pedro
author_facet Branco, Vasco V.
Benedek, Jandó
Pivovarova, Lidia
Correia, Luís
Cardoso, Pedro
contents 1. A hard stop for the implementation of rigorous conservation initiatives is our lack of key species data, especially occurrence data. Furthermore, researchers have to contend with an accelerated speed at which new information must be collected and processed due to anthropogenic activity. Publications ranging from scientific papers to gray literature contain this crucial information but their data are often not machine-readable, requiring extensive human work to be retrieved. 2. We present the ARETE R package, an open-source software aiming to automate data extraction of species occurrences powered by large language models, namely using the chatGPT Application Programming Interface. This R package integrates all steps of the data extraction and validation process, from Optical Character Recognition to detection of outliers and output in tabular format. Furthermore, we validate ARETE through systematic comparison between what is modelled and the work of human annotators. 3. We demonstrate the usefulness of the approach by comparing range maps produced using GBIF data and with those automatically extracted for 100 species of spiders. Newly extracted data allowed to expand the known Extent of Occurrence by a mean three orders of magnitude, revealing new areas where the species were found in the past, which mayhave important implications for spatial conservation planning and extinction risk assessments. 4. ARETE allows faster access to hitherto untapped occurrence data, a potential game changer in projects requiring such data. Researchers will be able to better prioritize resources, manually verifying selected species while maintaining automated extraction for the majority. This workflow also allows predicting available bibliographic data during project planning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_04573
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle ARETE: an R package for Automated REtrieval from TExt with large language models
Branco, Vasco V.
Benedek, Jandó
Pivovarova, Lidia
Correia, Luís
Cardoso, Pedro
Machine Learning
1. A hard stop for the implementation of rigorous conservation initiatives is our lack of key species data, especially occurrence data. Furthermore, researchers have to contend with an accelerated speed at which new information must be collected and processed due to anthropogenic activity. Publications ranging from scientific papers to gray literature contain this crucial information but their data are often not machine-readable, requiring extensive human work to be retrieved. 2. We present the ARETE R package, an open-source software aiming to automate data extraction of species occurrences powered by large language models, namely using the chatGPT Application Programming Interface. This R package integrates all steps of the data extraction and validation process, from Optical Character Recognition to detection of outliers and output in tabular format. Furthermore, we validate ARETE through systematic comparison between what is modelled and the work of human annotators. 3. We demonstrate the usefulness of the approach by comparing range maps produced using GBIF data and with those automatically extracted for 100 species of spiders. Newly extracted data allowed to expand the known Extent of Occurrence by a mean three orders of magnitude, revealing new areas where the species were found in the past, which mayhave important implications for spatial conservation planning and extinction risk assessments. 4. ARETE allows faster access to hitherto untapped occurrence data, a potential game changer in projects requiring such data. Researchers will be able to better prioritize resources, manually verifying selected species while maintaining automated extraction for the majority. This workflow also allows predicting available bibliographic data during project planning.
title ARETE: an R package for Automated REtrieval from TExt with large language models
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.04573