PaperBridge: Crafting Research Narratives through Human-AI Co-Exploration

Runhua ZHANG; Yang OUYANG; Leixian SHEN; Yuying TANG; Xiaojuan MA; Huamin QU; Xian XU

doi:10.1145/3746059.3747713

PaperBridge: Crafting Research Narratives through Human-AI Co-Exploration

Runhua ZHANG
, Yang OUYANG
, Leixian SHEN
, Yuying TANG
, Xiaojuan MA
, Huamin QU
, Xian XU^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Lingnan University

Research output: Book Chapters | Papers in Conference Proceedings › Conference paper (refereed) › Referred Conference Paper › peer-review

Abstract

Researchers frequently need to synthesize their own publications into coherent narratives that demonstrate their scholarly contributions. To suit diverse communication contexts, exploring alternative ways to organize one’s work while maintaining coherence is particularly challenging, especially in interdisciplinary fields like HCI where individual researchers’ publications may span diverse domains and methodologies. In this paper, we present PaperBridge, a human–AI co-exploration system informed by a formative study and content analysis. PaperBridge assists researchers in exploring diverse perspectives for organizing their publications into coherent narratives. At its core is a bi-directional analysis engine powered by large language models, supporting iterative exploration through both top-down user intent (e.g., determining organization structure) and bottom-up refinement on narrative components (e.g., thematic paper groupings). Our user study (N=12) demonstrated PaperBridge’s usability and effectiveness in facilitating the exploration of alternative research narratives. Our findings also provided empirical insights into how interactive systems can scaffold academic communication tasks.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	UIST 2025: Proceedings of the 38th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology
Editors	Andrea BIANCHI, Elena GLASSMAN, Wendy E. MACKAY, Shengdong ZHAO, Jeeeun KIM, Ian OAKLEY
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages	1-21
ISBN (Print)	9798400720376
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3746059.3747713
Publication status	Published - Sept 2025
Event	The 38th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology - Busan, Korea, Republic of Duration: 28 Sept 2025 → 1 Oct 2025

Conference

Conference	The 38th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology
Abbreviated title	UIST '25
Country/Territory	Korea, Republic of
City	Busan
Period	28/09/25 → 1/10/25

Bibliographical note

We sincerely thank all participants for their time and efforts, and
the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback, which significantly improved the quality of this paper.

We would like to thank Dr. Chengbo Zheng and Liwenhan Xie for their valuable discussions during the revision of this paper. We also thank Junze Li, Dr. Yao Wang, Hanlu Ma, Dr. Linping Yuan, Dingdong Liu, and Zheng Wei for their insightful comments on earlier drafts, and Jiawen Liu and Meiying Li for their help with proofreading. Finally, the first author wishes to express special thanks to Dr. Yulin Tian, Ziqi Pan, Qiaoyi Chen, and to those who showed patience and support during a personally challenging time. Their encouragement and willingness to simply be there made it possible to carry this work through to completion.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2025 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.

Funding

This work was partially supported by RGC GRF grant 16210722, and was supported in part by the EdUHK-HKUST Joint Centre for Artificial Intelligence (JC_AI) research scheme: Grant No. FB454.

Keywords

Academic Communication
Human-AI Collaboration
Storytelling

Access to Document

10.1145/3746059.3747713

Cite this

ZHANG, R., OUYANG, Y., SHEN, L., TANG, Y., MA, X., QU, H., & XU, X. (2025). PaperBridge: Crafting Research Narratives through Human-AI Co-Exploration. In A. BIANCHI, E. GLASSMAN, W. E. MACKAY, S. ZHAO, J. KIM, & I. OAKLEY (Eds.), UIST 2025: Proceedings of the 38th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (pp. 1-21). Article 126 Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. https://doi.org/10.1145/3746059.3747713

ZHANG, Runhua ; OUYANG, Yang ; SHEN, Leixian et al. / PaperBridge: Crafting Research Narratives through Human-AI Co-Exploration. UIST 2025: Proceedings of the 38th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology. editor / Andrea BIANCHI ; Elena GLASSMAN ; Wendy E. MACKAY ; Shengdong ZHAO ; Jeeeun KIM ; Ian OAKLEY. Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, 2025. pp. 1-21

@inproceedings{341ced95510e4361befb513c0304f171,

title = "PaperBridge: Crafting Research Narratives through Human-AI Co-Exploration",

abstract = "Researchers frequently need to synthesize their own publications into coherent narratives that demonstrate their scholarly contributions. To suit diverse communication contexts, exploring alternative ways to organize one{\textquoteright}s work while maintaining coherence is particularly challenging, especially in interdisciplinary fields like HCI where individual researchers{\textquoteright} publications may span diverse domains and methodologies. In this paper, we present PaperBridge, a human–AI co-exploration system informed by a formative study and content analysis. PaperBridge assists researchers in exploring diverse perspectives for organizing their publications into coherent narratives. At its core is a bi-directional analysis engine powered by large language models, supporting iterative exploration through both top-down user intent (e.g., determining organization structure) and bottom-up refinement on narrative components (e.g., thematic paper groupings). Our user study (N=12) demonstrated PaperBridge{\textquoteright}s usability and effectiveness in facilitating the exploration of alternative research narratives. Our findings also provided empirical insights into how interactive systems can scaffold academic communication tasks.",

keywords = "Academic Communication, Human-AI Collaboration, Storytelling",

author = "Runhua ZHANG and Yang OUYANG and Leixian SHEN and Yuying TANG and Xiaojuan MA and Huamin QU and Xian XU",

note = "We sincerely thank all participants for their time and efforts, and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback, which significantly improved the quality of this paper. We would like to thank Dr. Chengbo Zheng and Liwenhan Xie for their valuable discussions during the revision of this paper. We also thank Junze Li, Dr. Yao Wang, Hanlu Ma, Dr. Linping Yuan, Dingdong Liu, and Zheng Wei for their insightful comments on earlier drafts, and Jiawen Liu and Meiying Li for their help with proofreading. Finally, the first author wishes to express special thanks to Dr. Yulin Tian, Ziqi Pan, Qiaoyi Chen, and to those who showed patience and support during a personally challenging time. Their encouragement and willingness to simply be there made it possible to carry this work through to completion. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2025 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.; The 38th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, UIST '25 ; Conference date: 28-09-2025 Through 01-10-2025",

year = "2025",

month = sep,

doi = "10.1145/3746059.3747713",

language = "English",

isbn = "9798400720376",

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editor = "Andrea BIANCHI and Elena GLASSMAN and MACKAY, \{Wendy E.\} and Shengdong ZHAO and Jeeeun KIM and Ian OAKLEY",

booktitle = "UIST 2025: Proceedings of the 38th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology",

publisher = "Association for Computing Machinery, Inc",

address = "United States",

}

ZHANG, R, OUYANG, Y, SHEN, L, TANG, Y, MA, X, QU, H & XU, X 2025, PaperBridge: Crafting Research Narratives through Human-AI Co-Exploration. in A BIANCHI, E GLASSMAN, WE MACKAY, S ZHAO, J KIM & I OAKLEY (eds), UIST 2025: Proceedings of the 38th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology., 126, Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, pp. 1-21, The 38th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, Busan, Korea, Republic of, 28/09/25. https://doi.org/10.1145/3746059.3747713

PaperBridge: Crafting Research Narratives through Human-AI Co-Exploration. / ZHANG, Runhua; OUYANG, Yang; SHEN, Leixian et al.
UIST 2025: Proceedings of the 38th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology. ed. / Andrea BIANCHI; Elena GLASSMAN; Wendy E. MACKAY; Shengdong ZHAO; Jeeeun KIM; Ian OAKLEY. Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, 2025. p. 1-21 126.

Research output: Book Chapters | Papers in Conference Proceedings › Conference paper (refereed) › Referred Conference Paper › peer-review

TY - GEN

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AU - ZHANG, Runhua

AU - OUYANG, Yang

AU - SHEN, Leixian

AU - TANG, Yuying

AU - MA, Xiaojuan

AU - QU, Huamin

AU - XU, Xian

N1 - We sincerely thank all participants for their time and efforts, and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback, which significantly improved the quality of this paper. We would like to thank Dr. Chengbo Zheng and Liwenhan Xie for their valuable discussions during the revision of this paper. We also thank Junze Li, Dr. Yao Wang, Hanlu Ma, Dr. Linping Yuan, Dingdong Liu, and Zheng Wei for their insightful comments on earlier drafts, and Jiawen Liu and Meiying Li for their help with proofreading. Finally, the first author wishes to express special thanks to Dr. Yulin Tian, Ziqi Pan, Qiaoyi Chen, and to those who showed patience and support during a personally challenging time. Their encouragement and willingness to simply be there made it possible to carry this work through to completion. Publisher Copyright: © 2025 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.

PY - 2025/9

Y1 - 2025/9

N2 - Researchers frequently need to synthesize their own publications into coherent narratives that demonstrate their scholarly contributions. To suit diverse communication contexts, exploring alternative ways to organize one’s work while maintaining coherence is particularly challenging, especially in interdisciplinary fields like HCI where individual researchers’ publications may span diverse domains and methodologies. In this paper, we present PaperBridge, a human–AI co-exploration system informed by a formative study and content analysis. PaperBridge assists researchers in exploring diverse perspectives for organizing their publications into coherent narratives. At its core is a bi-directional analysis engine powered by large language models, supporting iterative exploration through both top-down user intent (e.g., determining organization structure) and bottom-up refinement on narrative components (e.g., thematic paper groupings). Our user study (N=12) demonstrated PaperBridge’s usability and effectiveness in facilitating the exploration of alternative research narratives. Our findings also provided empirical insights into how interactive systems can scaffold academic communication tasks.

AB - Researchers frequently need to synthesize their own publications into coherent narratives that demonstrate their scholarly contributions. To suit diverse communication contexts, exploring alternative ways to organize one’s work while maintaining coherence is particularly challenging, especially in interdisciplinary fields like HCI where individual researchers’ publications may span diverse domains and methodologies. In this paper, we present PaperBridge, a human–AI co-exploration system informed by a formative study and content analysis. PaperBridge assists researchers in exploring diverse perspectives for organizing their publications into coherent narratives. At its core is a bi-directional analysis engine powered by large language models, supporting iterative exploration through both top-down user intent (e.g., determining organization structure) and bottom-up refinement on narrative components (e.g., thematic paper groupings). Our user study (N=12) demonstrated PaperBridge’s usability and effectiveness in facilitating the exploration of alternative research narratives. Our findings also provided empirical insights into how interactive systems can scaffold academic communication tasks.

KW - Academic Communication

KW - Human-AI Collaboration

KW - Storytelling

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105022978608

U2 - 10.1145/3746059.3747713

DO - 10.1145/3746059.3747713

M3 - Conference paper (refereed)

SN - 9798400720376

SP - 1

EP - 21

BT - UIST 2025: Proceedings of the 38th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology

A2 - BIANCHI, Andrea

A2 - GLASSMAN, Elena

A2 - MACKAY, Wendy E.

A2 - ZHAO, Shengdong

A2 - KIM, Jeeeun

A2 - OAKLEY, Ian

PB - Association for Computing Machinery, Inc

T2 - The 38th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology

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ER -

ZHANG R, OUYANG Y, SHEN L, TANG Y, MA X, QU H et al. PaperBridge: Crafting Research Narratives through Human-AI Co-Exploration. In BIANCHI A, GLASSMAN E, MACKAY WE, ZHAO S, KIM J, OAKLEY I, editors, UIST 2025: Proceedings of the 38th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology. Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. 2025. p. 1-21. 126 Epub 2025 Sept 27. doi: 10.1145/3746059.3747713

PaperBridge: Crafting Research Narratives through Human-AI Co-Exploration

Abstract

Conference

Bibliographical note

Funding

Keywords

Access to Document

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