Dimensions of relevance

Abstract

Relevance has become a major area of research in the field of Information Retrieval, despite the fact that the concept relevance is not well understood. This paper models manifestations of relevance within a system of relevance attributes to show that the attributes function in different dimensions for the different manifestations of relevance. It is shown that motivational relevance, as a manifestation of relevance, should not be viewed as part of a linear, objective–subjective scale of relevances, but rather as an attribute of relevance. Similarly, that the manifestation of affective relevance should not be viewed as a discrete category of relevance manifestation, but rather as an influencing factor on the other subjective relevance types. The paper argues a consolidated model of relevance manifestations which includes the notion of socio-cognitive relevance.