A Probability Ranking Principle for Collaborative Search

Abstract

In various work domains, the collaborative performance of a work task by a team can lead to a shared information need required to fulfill this task. Many empirical studies identified collaborative information seeking and retrieval as everyday work patterns in order to solve a shared information need and to benefit from the diverse expertise and experience of the team members. In everyday work practices, collaboration is realized by utilizing a broad range of software tools that build a heterogeneous collaboration environment. In such environments, collaboration is performed in a loosely coupled manner and using tools designed for individual usage. In this chapter, we present a general probabilistic framework for ranking documents in such collaborative settings that accounts for differences in skills and expertise within the team and ranks documents accordingly. Our approach is justified by decision theory. We present a proof of optimality of our ranking principle and show that it can serve as a justification for previous research approaches in the area of collaborative search.