Text Simplification of Scientific Texts for Non-Expert Readers
Björn Engelmann Fabian Haak Christin Katharina Kreutz Narjes Nikzad Khasmakhi Philipp Schaer
Reading levels are highly individual and can depend on a text's language, a
person's cognitive abilities, or knowledge on a topic. Text simplification is
the task of rephrasing a text to better cater to the abilities of a specific
target reader group. Simplification of scientific abstracts helps non-experts
to access the core information by bypassing formulations that require domain or
expert knowledge. This is especially relevant for, e.g., cancer patients
reading about novel treatment options. The SimpleText lab hosts the
simplification of scientific abstracts for non-experts (Task 3) to advance this
field. We contribute three runs employing out-of-the-box summarization models
(two based on T5, one based on PEGASUS) and one run using ChatGPT with complex
phrase identification.