Words | Michele Pasin

blog Ontospy: three releases in a day, after nearly four years of silence

Oct 2026

Today I released three versions of Ontospy: 2.2, 2.3 and 2.4. The previous release was in November 2022.

Oct 2026

Ask your mom whether your business idea is any good and she'll say yes. Not because it is, but because she loves you. That's the starting point of The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick. The trouble is that everyone behaves like your mom. Show people an idea and they'll be polite. They'll say it sounds great, that they'd totally use it, that you should let them know when it launches. None of that is data. It just feels like data.

blog A Dream of Venice, with Claude as Editor

Sep 2026

My children can read Italian. Most of their classmates can't. Back in July 2023 I wanted to read the book Un sogno a Venezia by Štěpán Zavřel to their class at school, so first I had to put it into English. Recently I have picked up that project again and used Claude to review it — it's impressive what AI can do with language translation.

blog Reading Naples '44 as a database

Sep 2026

I recently read Norman Lewis's Naples '44, and it stayed with me more than most books do.

blog Five new ways to visualize Wittgenstein's Tractatus

Aug 2026

I've spent a bit more time this year on Wittgensteiniana, my long-running side project that turns Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus into a set of experimental visualizations. Five of them are worth writing up properly: Depth-Rhythm, Silence Spiral, Heartbeat Strip, The Ladder, and Concept Web.

blog AI Skills Are a Cottage Industry - And That Might Be Permanent

Jun 2026

Everyone in my organisation is building their own AI skills. Prompts for summarising documents, triaging emails, drafting updates, analysing data. Each one slightly different. Each one optimised for the person who built it.

blog What the data doesn't show: presenting at CLACSO's funding flows project

Apr 2026

I was in Buenos Aires last week for the closing event of Tracking research funding flows in the Global South, a project run by CLACSO in partnership with CWTS/Leiden University and IDRC. I'd been invited to present on Dimensions as a funding data infrastructure - roughly fifteen minutes to explain what we collect, how it's structured, and where we stand on openness.

blog The Shifting Landscape of Research Analytics: From Data Access to Trustworthy Insights

Mar 2026

I watched the "Vibe Coding with Open Alex" video recently, and it's been rattling around in my head since.

blog Event: Hayden Thorpe live in Pordenone

Oct 2025

I went to see Hayden Thorpe for the first time the other night at Pordenone's Ex-Convento Live venue (Italy). It's quite funny because I had never heard of this musician before last week. I just ran into him on Spotify and immediately felt it was so introspective and inspiring, full of simple yet deep melodies. I loved the performance and am looking forward to seeing more of him!

paper The Dimensions API: a domain specific language for scientometrics research

Oct 2025 · Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics · https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2025.1514938

We describe the Dimensions Search Language (DSL), a domain-specific language for bibliographic and scientometrics analysis. The DSL is the main component of the Dimensions API (version 2.12.0), which provides end-users with a powerful, yet simple-to-learn and use, tool to search, filter, and analyze the Dimensions database using a single entry point and query language. The DSL is the result of an effort to model the way researchers and analysts describe research questions in this domain, as opposed to using established paradigms commonly used by software developers e.g., REST or SOAP. In this article, we describe the API architecture, the DSL main features, and the core data model. We describe how it is used by researchers and analysts in academic and business settings alike to carry out complex research analytics tasks, like calculating the H-index of a researcher or generating a publications' citation network.