Abstract
Knowledge workers (such as healthcare information professionals, patent agents and recruitment professionals) undertake work tasks where search forms a core part of their duties. In these instances, the search task is often complex and time-consuming and requires specialist expert knowledge to formulate accurate search strategies. Interactive features such as query expansion can play a key role in supporting these tasks. However, generating query suggestions within a professional search context requires that consideration be given to the specialist, structured nature of the search strategies they employ. In this paper, we investigate a variety of query expansion methods applied to a collection of Boolean search strategies used in a variety of real-world professional search tasks. The results demonstrate the utility of context-free distributional language models and the value of using linguistic cues to optimise the balance between precision and recall.
Highlights
Many knowledge workers rely on the effective use of search applications in the course of their professional duties (Verberne et al, 2019)
Query expansion is known to be highly valued by healthcare information professionals, so the potential for adoption of even imperfect query suggestion techniques could lead to considerable impact
We review the role of query suggestions within the context of professional search strategies used in real-world search tasks
Summary
Many knowledge workers rely on the effective use of search applications in the course of their professional duties (Verberne et al, 2019). Healthcare information professionals perform systematic reviews of published literature sources as the foundation of evidence-based medicine (Russell-Rose and Chamberlain, 2017). Patent agents rely on prior art search as the foundation of their due diligence process (Lupu et al, 2011). Recruitment professionals use Boolean search as the foundation of the candidate sourcing process (Russell-Rose and Chamberlain, 2016a). One of the earliest definitions was proposed by Koster et al (Koster et al, 2009), whereby professional search: Russell-Rose et al. Is performed by a professional for financial compensation; Is within a particular domain and/or area of expertise; Has a specified brief, which is typically well defined but complex; Has a high value outcome where the results will reduce risk, provide assurances, etc.; Has budgetary constraints such as time and money.
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