Jessica Yi-Yun Cheng, Ph.D

4 Huntington St· New Brunswick, NJ 08901
yiyun.cheng@rutgers.edu

Hi! I am an assistant professor at the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University. My research explores how taxonomies, metadata, and knowledge organization systems shape the ways data can be integrated, represented, and understood. I leverage various methods in my work, including conceptual modeling, computational approaches, experiments, surveys, and interviews. Here are the themes of my current projects:

  • Examining curation practices in biodiversity data and natural history museum collections
  • Exploring the use of provenance metadata and conceptual models
  • domain-specific taxonomy generation and alignment
  • Investigating implicit assumptions in geographic taxonomies

I am looking to recruit 1-2 doctoral students. If you are a prospective PhD student interested in working with me, please apply through the Rutgers SC&I PhD program and mention my name in your application materials. If you are a current PhD, Master's or undegraduate student at Rutgers, please email me to inquire further details about research or independet study opportunities.

Research

selected publications

Taxonomy

Cheng, Y. Y., & Dinh, L. (2025). An experiment on the impact of relation types towards taxonomy alignment problems. Information Processing & Management, 62(3), 104036.doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2024.104036

Cheng, Y.-Y., & Xia, Y. (2023). A systematic review of methods for aligning, mapping, merging taxonomies in information sciences. Journal of Documentation, (ahead-of-print).doi: https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-01-2023-0003

Cheng, Y.-Y., & Ludäscher, B. (2020). Reconciling Taxonomies of Electoral Constituencies and Recognized Tribes of Indigenous Taiwan. Virtual, Oct 23-27. In Proceedings of the ASIS&T 2020 Annual Meeting. doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/pra2.248

Cheng, Y.-Y.& Ludäscher, B. (2019). Exploring Geopolitical Realities through Taxonomies: The Case of Taiwan. In Proceedings of North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization (NASKO 2019), Vol. 7. Drexel University, Philadelphia, June 13-14. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7152/nasko.v7i1.15625

Cheng, Y.-Y., Franz, N., Schneider, J., Yu, S., Rodenhasen, T., Ludäscher, B. (2017). Agreeing to Disagree: Reconciling Conflicting Taxonomic Views Using a Logic-based Approach. In Proceedings of the ASIS&T 2017 Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., USA, October 27-November 1st. doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/pra2.2017.14505401006

Domain-specific KOSs

Cheng, Y. Y., & Dinh, L. (2025). Extracting geographic relations from large social media text data. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 1-29. :https://doi.org/10.1080/13658816.2025.2510419

Cheng, Y.-Y. (2023). Under Whose Wings? A Conceptual Model for Incorporating Historical Sovereignty Information in Biodiversity Data. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. :http://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24848

Cheng, Y.-Y., Hoang, K.-L., & Ludäscher, B. (2020). Cacao, Cocao, or Cocoa? Reconciliation of Taxonomic Names in Biodiversity Heritage Library. In Proceedings of the Sixteenth International ISKO Conference, Aalborg, Denmark. doi : https://doi.org/10.5771/9783956507762-88

Thomer, A., Cheng, Y.-Y., Schneider J., Twidale, M., Ludäscher, B. (2017). Towards Alignment of Natural History Museum Database Schemas Using a Logic-based Reasoning Tool. Knowledge Organization, (44) 7, 545-558. doi:https://doi.org/10.5771/0943-7444-2017-7-545

Provenance Research

Cheng, Y. Y., & Choi, I. (2025). From Editorial Records to Structured Provenance Information: Documenting Warrant in Knowledge Organization Systems Using Large Language Models. Knowledge Organization, 52(3), 39046. doi:https://doi.org/10.31083/KO39046

Choi, I., & Cheng.Y-Y. (2024). A Conceptual Model for Tracking the Provenance of Activities in Knowledge Organization Systems. Journal of Documentation.

Bettivia, R., Cheng, Y.-Y., Gryk, M. (2023). What Does Provenance LACK: How Retrospective and Prospective Met the Subjunctive. In Information for a Better World: Normality, Virtuality, Physicality, Inclusivity: 18th International Conference, iConference 2023, Virtual Event, March 13–17, 2023, Proceedings, Part II (pp. 74-82). doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28032-0_6

Bettivia, R., Cheng, Y.-Y., Gryk, M. (2022). Documenting the Future: Navigating Provenance Metadata Standards. Synthesis Lectures on Information Concepts, Retrieval, and Services. SpringerNature. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18700-1

Education

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Doctor of Philosophy, Information Science

Dissertation: Agreeing to Disagree: Applying a Logic-based Approach to Reconciling and Merging Multiple Taxonomies

August 2016-August 2022

National Taiwan University

Master of Arts, Library and Information Science

Graduated with college honors

Thesis: A Study on the Best Practice for Constructing a Cross-lingual Geospatial Information Ontology

Sept 2013-June 2015

National Taiwan University

Bachelor of Arts, Library and Information Science

Graduated with college honors

Sept 2009-June 2013

Grants

  • $150,000, PI, Storytelling Across Time: Building a Community Around Provenance (B-CAP). the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), National Leadership Planning Grants for Libraries. Co-PIs: Rhiannon Bettivia, Michael Gryk.
  • $5,000,000, co-PI, Advance Bridge Technology Clearinghouse (ATBC) project, U.S. Department of Transportation. PI: Nenad Gucunski.
  • $5,000, PI, Grants for Individual Faculty Research, SC&I, Rutgers

Awards

  • Berner-Nash Doctoral Dissertation Award
  • Beta Phi Mu Eugene Garfield Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship
  • Anita and Marie Hostetter Scholarship
  • LEADS-4-NDP Fellowship, 2019, 2020
  • Teacher Ranked as Excellent (University of Illinois)
  • 1 st Place - 2018 ASIS&T Student Design Competition winner

Teaching

Courses
  • Organizing Information (SC&I)
  • Metadata for the Information Professionals (SC&I)
  • Digital Curation (SC&I)
  • Retrieving and Evaluating Electronic Information (SC&I)
  • Metadata in Theory and Practice (UIUC)
  • Theory & Practice Data Cleaning (UIUC)
  • Special Topics on Knowledge Organization (NTU)
Workshops and Tutorials
  • Navigating through the Panoply of Provenance Metadata Standards useful for Digital Curation, iConference 2021
  • Navigating through the Panoply of Provenance Metadata Standards useful for Digital Curation, IDCC 2020