PEaCE

Code to recreate PEaCE dataset for LREC-COLING 2024 paper PEaCE: A Chemistry-Oriented Dataset for Optical Character Recognition on Scientific Documents.

Obtain Existing PEaCE Dataset

The original dataset of 1M+ records can be found here. The file can be de-compressed by executing the following command: tar -xzvf PEaCE.tar.gz. The file is structured as follows:

• PEaCE
  • final_renders/
  • train.txt
  • dev.txt
  • test.txt
  • fonts.jsonl
  • labels.jsonl
  • vocab.jsonl

Each line of [train|dev|test].txt contains the filename of one record in the final_renders directory. The splits contain a roughly equal distribution of printed English, chemical equation, and numerical records. fonts.jsonl describes the fontsize and font type used to render each record. Each (token, count) pair in vocab.jsonl describes a token in the vocabulary of the OCR models we explored and their count in the dataset.

The real-world test records can be found in the data/real_world_test_set directory in this repository.

Creating a New Dataset

Running make_records.py as given will create a dataset using the same parameters as described in the publication. We provide a brief description of important parameters below to enable others to create datasets suitable for their applications.

Downloading Printed English Source Data

ArXiv and PubMed

The ArXiv and PubMed datasets can be found in Arman Cohan's long-summarization repository. Create arxiv-dataset and pubmed-dataset directories in data/, placing the corresponding [train|val|test].txt files in each directory.

chemRxiv

The chemRxiv data can be obtained using the chemrxiv() method provided in the paperscraper repository. The data (a jsonl file) will be downloaded to the server_dumps folder in the paperscraper repo. Create a chemrxiv-dataset directory in data/, and place the downloaded jsonl file there.

Creating New Records

Structural Parameters

• --n_[text|chemeq|numeral]_sample: The number of printex english, chemical equation, and numeric records to create.
• --text_[superscript|subscript]_p: The probability ([0, 1]) of a superscript/subscript being added to a printed English record.
• --text_latex_insertion_p: The probability ([0, 1]) of a latex symbol being randomly inserted in a printed English record.
• --text_newline_p: The probability ([0, 1]) of carriage returns being randomly inserted in a printed English record.
• --text_[min|max]_n_words: The minimum/maximum number of words to be included in a printed English record.
• --chemeq_n_compound: The maximum number of compounds to be included in each chemical equation record.
• --chemeq_n_elements: The maximum number of elements to be included in each compound in a chemical equation record.
• --chemeq_n_quanitty: The maximum quantity associated with any element in a chemical equation record.
• --numeral_symbol_p: The probability ([0, 1]) that a LaTex symbol be generated in place of a number in numerical records.
• --numeral_decimal_p: The probability ([0, 1]) of a decimal being generated when creating a number for a numerical record. Else, an integer is created.
• --numeral_max_numerals: The maximum number of numbers/symbols to be included in numerical records.
• --max_w: The maximum width, in pixels, of each constructed record.

Stylistic Parameters

• --fontsizes: The font sizes that will be sampled when rendering each record.
• --fontsize_weights: The weight associated with sampling each fontsize.
• --available_font_names: The font types that will be samples when rendering each record.
  • We found this resource useful in identifying which fonts are available.

Processing Parameters

• n_workers: The number of processes that will be used to construct records.

An example of how a custom version of the dataset can be created is given below:

python3 make_records.py --n_text_sample 50000 --n_chemeq_sample 2500 --n_numeral_sample 1500 \
    --text_superscript_p 0.05 --text_subscript_p 0.025 --text_latex_insertion_p 0.1 \
    --chemeq_n_compound 6 --numeral_max_numerals 3 \
    --fontsizes 12 20 32 --fonsize_weights 1 2 3 --available_font_names 'Noto Mono' 'URW Bookman'

The above command creates 50,000 printed English records, 2,500 chemical equation records, and 1,500 numerical records. Superscripts are added to each record with 5% probability, subscripts with 2.5% probability, and LaTex symbols with 10% probability. Each chemical equation will contain upto 6 compound, and each numerical record will contain upto 3 numerals/LaTex symbols. Records will be rendered with either Noto Mono or URW Bookman in one of three fontsizes, with the larger fontsizes having a larger weight for sampling.

Citation