The single meaningful assertion in machine readable format is called a nanopublication. The smallest conceivable assertion has the structure of a subject, a predicate and an object. To form a nanopublication this “triple” needs to be published in machine readable format with full provenance and publication information (also in machine readable format) [14]. Note: Provenance and publication information is usually also in “triple” format (Panel A). The exact same assertion may appear in the IFDS multiple times (up to many thousands actually) and each of those identical assertions has a different provenance associated and thus by definition constitutes a unique nanopublication (Panel B). If we take the “cardinal” assertion that is common in all nanopublications asserting the same, we create a so called Cardinal Assertion [15]. Cardinal Assertions are thus much less abundant than individual nanopublications in the IFDS. In principle, each Cardinal Assertion exists only once (as a unit of assertion) and it is “associated” with multiple, potentially many thousands of instances of nanopublications that assert the same, but differ in provenance.