User's Initial Query Research Articles

A Query Expansion Method Using Multinomial Naive Bayes

Information retrieval (IR) aims to obtain relevant information according to a certain user need and involves a great diversity of data such as texts, images, or videos. Query expansion techniques, as part of information retrieval (IR), are used to obtain more items, particularly documents, that are relevant to the user requirements. The user initial query is reformulated, adding meaningful terms with similar significance. In this study, a supervised query expansion technique based on an innovative use of the Multinomial Naive Bayes to extract relevant terms from the first documents retrieved by the initial query is presented. The proposed method was evaluated using MAP and R-prec on the first 5, 10, 15, and 100 retrieved documents. The improved performance of the expanded queries increased the number of relevant retrieved documents in comparison to the baseline method. We achieved more accurate document retrieval results (MAP 0.335, R-prec 0.369, P5 0.579, P10 0.469, P15 0.393, P100 0.175) as compared to the top performers in TREC2017 Precision Medicine Track.

Document Representation and Query Expansion Models for Blog Recommendation

We explore several different document representation models and two query expansion models for the task of recommending blogs to a user in response to a query. Blog relevance ranking differs from traditional document ranking in ad-hocinformation retrieval in several ways: (1) the unit of output (the blog) is composed of a collection of documents (the blog posts) rather than a single document, (2) the query represents an ongoing and typically multifaceted interest in the topic rather than a passing ad-hoc information need and (3) due to the propensity of spam, splogs, and tangential comments, the blogosphere is particularly challenging to use as a source for high-quality query expansion terms. We address these differences at the document representation level, by comparing retrieval models that view either the blog or its constituent posts as the atomic units of retrieval, and at the query expansion level, by making novel use of the links and anchor text in Wikipedia1 to expand a user's initial query. We develop two complementary models of blog retrieval that perform at comparable levels of precision and recall. We also show consistent and significant improvement across all models using our Wikipedia expansion strategy.

Semantic Representation of a Geo-Social User Profile for a Personalised Information Retrieval

The user-centred information retrieval needs to introduce semantics into the user modelling for a meaningful representation of user interests. The semantic representation of the user interests helps to improve the identification of the user’s future cognitive needs. In this paper, we present a semantic-based approach for a personalised information retrieval. This approach is based on the design and the exploitation of a user profile to represent the user and his interests. In this user profile, we combine an ontological semantics issued from WordNet ontology, and a personal semantics issued from the different user interactions with the search system and with his social and situational contexts of his previous searches. The personal semantics considers the co-occurrence relations between relevant components of the user profile as semantic links. The user profile is used to improve two important phases of the information search process: (i) expansion of the initial user query and (ii) adaptation of the search results to the user interests.

A New Approach in Query Expansion Methods for Improving Information Retrieval

This research develops a new approach to query expansion by integrating Association Rules (AR) and Ontology. In the proposed approach, there are several steps to expand the query, namely (1) the document retrieval step; (2) the step of query expansion using AR; (3) the step of query expansion using Ontology. In the initial step, the system retrieved the top documents via the user's initial query. Next is the initial processing step (stopword removal, POS Tagging, TF-IDF). Then do a Frequent Itemset (FI) search from the list of terms generated from the previous step using FP-Growth. The association rules search by using the results of FI. The output from the AR step expanded using Ontology. The results of the expansion with Ontology use as new queries. The dataset used is a collection of learning documents. Ten queries used for the testing, the test results are measured by three measuring devices, namely recall, precision, and f-measure. Based on testing and analysis results, integrating AR and Ontology can increase the relevance of documents with the value of recall, precision, and f-measure by 87.28, 79.07, and 82.85.

Query expansion based on term distribution and DBpedia features

Query Expansion (QE) approaches that involve the reformulation of queries by adding new terms to the initial user query, are intended to ameliorate the vocabulary mismatch between the query keywords and the documents’ in Information Retrieval Systems (IRS). One big issue in QE is the selection of the right candidate terms for expansion. For this purpose Linked Data can be used, as a valuable resource, for providing additional expansion features such as the values of sub- and super classes of resources. The underlying research question is whether interlinked data and vocabulary items provide features which can be taken into account for query expansion. In this paper, we introduced a new QE approach that aimed at improving IRS by using the well-known distribution based method Bose-Einstein statistics (Bo1) as well as Linked Data from the knowledge base DBpedia using different numbers of expansion terms. We evaluated the effectiveness of each method individually as well as their combinations using two Text REtrieval Conference (TREC) test collections. Our approach has lead to significant improvement in terms of precision, recall, Mean Average Precision (MAP) at rank 10, and normalized Discounted Cumulative Gain (nDCG) at different ranks compared to Pseudo Relevance Feedback (PRF) that we used as a baseline. The results show that the inclusion of semantic annotations clearly improves the retrieval performance over the baseline method.

Performance evaluation of reformulated query for information retrieval using real estate ontology

The data over the internet is growing at an unprecedented rate daily. Hence efficient information retrieval has always been at stake. The scenario becomes more tedious in an e-government sector like real estate where fetching of legal documentation used for buying and selling of land property is unknown to novice users. The uncommon legal terminology also dilutes the keyword-based retrieval system. The proposed system thus insists on creating and further utilising ontology in this semantic web era. The performance of information retrieval is measured by calculating various parameters like mean average precision, precision@k, and normalised discounted cumulative gain for general user query first and then comparing it with the reformulated query after applying the real estate ontology. The experimental results are further statistically checked to depict an improvement in all the parameters thereby indicating that an initial user query, after ontological reformulation improves the efficiency of the information retrieval process.

Intelligent fuzzy information retrieval based on ontology knowledge-base

Intelligent fuzzy information retrieval (IR) based on ontology knowledge base has become one of the most active research directions in the field of intelligent IR system. How to use ontology knowledge base to further improve its retrieval performance and intelligence has become the main research goal of intelligent fuzzy IR system based on ontology knowledge-base. IR using knowledge organisation can improve the quality between returning document and user's initial query. The intelligent fuzzy information retrieval model proposed in this paper can provide a coded knowledge-base structure for IR, which is composed of multiple related ontologies, and the relationship between ontology is expressed as fuzzy relationship. In this kind of knowledge organisation, a new method is used to extend user's initial query and index document set, which independently represents ontology and the relationship between concepts. The experimental results show that the proposed model has a better overall performance compared with the other classical IR method. The prospects for future development and suggestions for possible extensions of the ontology knowledge base-based intelligent fuzzy IR systems are also discussed.

Intelligent fuzzy information retrieval based on ontology knowledge-base

Intelligent fuzzy information retrieval (IR) based on ontology knowledge base has become one of the most active research directions in the field of intelligent IR system. How to use ontology knowledge base to further improve its retrieval performance and intelligence has become the main research goal of intelligent fuzzy IR system based on ontology knowledge-base. IR using knowledge organisation can improve the quality between returning document and user's initial query. The intelligent fuzzy information retrieval model proposed in this paper can provide a coded knowledge-base structure for IR, which is composed of multiple related ontologies, and the relationship between ontology is expressed as fuzzy relationship. In this kind of knowledge organisation, a new method is used to extend user's initial query and index document set, which independently represents ontology and the relationship between concepts. The experimental results show that the proposed model has a better overall performance compared with the other classical IR method. The prospects for future development and suggestions for possible extensions of the ontology knowledge base-based intelligent fuzzy IR systems are also discussed.

Information Retrieval Model using Uncertain Confidence's Network

This paper proposes a new relevance feedback approach to collaborative information retrieval based on a confidence's network, which performs propagation relevance between annotations terms. The main contribution of our approach is to extract relevant terms to reformulate the initial user query considering the annotations as an information source. The proposed model introduces the concept of necessity that allows determining the terms that have strong association relationships. The authors estimated the association relationship to a measure of a confidence. Another contribution consists on determining the relevant annotations for a given evidence source. Since the user is over whelmed by a variety of contradictory annotations on even one which are far from the original subject, the authors' model proceed filtering these annotations to determine the relevant one and then it classify them by grouping those related semantically. The experimental study conducted on different queries gives promoters results. They show very encouraging results that could reach an improvement rate.

Modeling users’ search sessions for high utility query recommendation

Query recommendation has long been considered a key feature of search engines, which can improve users' search experience by providing useful query suggestions for their search tasks. Most existing approaches on query recommendation aim to recommend relevant queries, i.e., alternative queries similar to a user's initial query. However, the ultimate goal of query recommendation is to assist users to reformulate queries so that they can accomplish their search task successfully and quickly. Only considering relevance in query recommendation is apparently not directly toward this goal. In this paper, we argue that it is more important to directly recommend queries with high utility, i.e., queries that can better satisfy users' information needs. For this purpose, we attempt to infer query utility from users' sequential search behaviors recorded in their search sessions. Specifically, we propose a dynamic Bayesian network, referred as Query Utility Model (QUM), to capture query utility by simultaneously modeling users' reformulation and click behaviors. We then recommend queries with high utility to help users better accomplish their search tasks. We empirically evaluated the performance of our approach on a publicly released query log by comparing with the state-of-the-art methods. The experimental results show that, by recommending high utility queries, our approach is far more effective in helping users find relevant search results and thus satisfying their information needs.

Enriching queries with user preferences in healthcare

Query enrichment is a process of dynamically enhancing a user query based on her preferences and context in order to provide a personalized answer. The central idea is that different users may find different services relevant due to different preferences and contexts. In this paper, we present a preference model that combines user preferences, user context, domain knowledge to enrich the initial user query. We use CP-nets to rank the preferences using implicit and explicit user preferences and domain knowledge. We present some algorithms for preferential matching. We have implemented the proposed model as a prototype. The initial results look promising.

A Flexible Query Answering Approach for Autonomous Web Databases

Users often have imprecise ideas when searching the autonomous Web databases and thus may not know how to precisely formulate queries that lead to satisfactory answers. This paper proposes a novel flexible query answering approach that uses query relaxation mechanism to present relevant answers to the users. Based on the user initial query and the data distribution, we first speculate how much the user cares about each attribute and assign a corresponding weight to it. Then, the initial query is relaxed by adding the most similar attribute values into the query criteria range. The relaxation order of attributes specified by the query and the relaxed degree on each specified attribute are varied with the attribute weights. The first attribute to be relaxed is the least important attribute. For the relevant result tuples, they are finally ranked according to their satisfaction to the initial query. The efficiency of our approach is also demonstrated by experimental result.

PRESY: A Context Based Query Reformulation Tool for Information Retrieval on the Web

Problem Statement: The huge number of information on the web as well as the growth of new inexperienced users creates new challenges for information retrieval. It has become increasingly difficult for these users to find relevant documents that satisfy their individual needs. Certainly the current search engines (such as Google, Bing and Yahoo) offer an efficient way to browse the web content. However, the result quality is highly based on uses queries which need to be more precise to find relevant documents. This task still complicated for the majority of inept users who cannot express their needs with significant words in the query. For that reason, we believe that a reformulation of the initial user's query can be a good alternative to improve the information selectivity. This study proposes a novel approach and presents a prototype system called PRESY (Profile-based REformulation SYstem) for information retrieval on the web. Approach: It uses an incremental approach to categorize users by constructing a contextual base. The latter is composed of two types of context (static and dynamic) obtained using the users' profiles. The architecture proposed was implemented using .Net environment to perform queries reformulating tests. Results: The experiments gives at the end of this article show that the precision of the returned content is effectively improved. The tests were performed with the most popular searching engine (i.e. Google, Bind and Yahoo) selected in particular for their high selectivity. Among the given results, we found that query reformulation improve the first three results by 10.7% and 11.7% of the next seven returned elements. So as we can see the reformulation of users' initial queries improves the pertinence of returned content.

Information Filtering using Fuzzy-Genetic Algorithm Approach

Automatic filtering of information has become increasingly important in recent years due to large availability of electronic information. We present an approach for optimization of Information Retrieval System (IRS) by genetic algorithm and fuzzy sets in an adaptive filtering process. From the observed user preferences regarding documents in the sets retrieved, the system learns from the user's information needs. An interest profile is created that represents the needs as learned from the observed preferences in the user's area of interest. The proposed system will act as an offline information-filtering agent. The documents have been already downloaded from the Internet using google. The system generates a recommendation based on adaptive filtering using a set of keywords extracted from all documents evaluated by user. The process starts with the initial set of documents retrieved as the answer to user's initial query in the area of interest. The preferences given by the user are learned through explicit feedback on retrieved documents. The agent filters and ranks the retrieved information according to user's preferences using Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Fuzzy Set Theory. The system has been implemented using Java on Windows 98.

Assisting Consumer Health Information Retrieval with Query Recommendations

ObjectiveHealth information retrieval (HIR) on the Internet has become an important practice for millions of people, many of whom have problems forming effective queries. We have developed and evaluated a tool to assist people in health-related query formation. DesignWe developed the Health Information Query Assistant (HIQuA) system. The system suggests alternative/additional query terms related to the user's initial query that can be used as building blocks to construct a better, more specific query. The recommended terms are selected according to their semantic distance from the original query, which is calculated on the basis of concept co-occurrences in medical literature and log data as well as semantic relations in medical vocabularies. MeasurementsAn evaluation of the HIQuA system was conducted and a total of 213 subjects participated in the study. The subjects were randomized into 2 groups. One group was given query recommendations and the other was not. Each subject performed HIR for both a predefined and a self-defined task. ResultsThe study showed that providing HIQuA recommendations resulted in statistically significantly higher rates of successful queries (odds ratio = 1.66, 95% confidence interval = 1.16–2.38), although no statistically significant impact on user satisfaction or the users' ability to accomplish the predefined retrieval task was found. ConclusionProviding semantic-distance-based query recommendations can help consumers with query formation during HIR.

Adaptive Interface for Personalizing Information Seeking

An adaptive interface autonomously adjusts its display and available actions to current goals and abilities of the user by assessing user status, system task, and the context. Knowledge content adaptability is needed for knowledge acquisition and refinement tasks. In the case of knowledge content adaptability, the requirements of interface design focus on the elicitation of information from the user and the refinement of information based on patterns of interaction. In such cases, the emphasis on adaptability is on facilitating information search and knowledge discovery. In this article, we present research on adaptive interfaces that facilitates personalized information seeking from a large data warehouse. The resulting proof-of-concept system, called source recommendation system (SRS), assists users in locating and navigating data sources in the repository. Based on the initial user query and an analysis of the content of the search results, the SRS system generates a profile of the user tailored to the individual's context during information seeking. The user profiles are refined successively and are used in progressively guiding the user to the appropriate set of sources within the knowledge base. The SRS system is implemented as an Internet browser plug-in to provide a seamless and unobtrusive, personalized experience to the users during the information search process. The rationale behind our approach, system design, empirical evaluation, and implications for research on adaptive interfaces are described in this paper.

Query expansion and MEDLINE

This paper evaluates the retrieval effectiveness of query expansion strategies on a MEDLINE test collection using Cornell University's SMART retrieval system. Three expansion strategies are tested on their ability to identify appropriate McSH terms for user queries: expansion using an inter-field statistical thesaurus, expansion via retrieval feedback and expansion using a combined approach. These expansion strategies do not require prior relevance decisions. The study compares retrieval effectiveness using the original unexpanded and the alternative expanded user queries on a collection of 75 queries and 2334 MEDLINE citations. Retrieval effectiveness is assessed using eleven point average precision scores (11-AvgP). The combination of expansion using the thesaurus followed by retrieval feedback gives the best improvement of 17% over a baseline performance of 0.5169 11-AvgP. However this improvement is almost identical to that achieved by expansion via retrieval feedback (16.4%). Query expansion using the inter-field thesaurus gives a significant but lower performance improvement (9.9%) over the same baseline. This study recommends query expansion using retrieval feedback for adding McSH search terms to a user's initial query.

Mapping techniques for document processing

An information retrieval system should provide references to the set of documents the user must evaluate in order to satisfy his/her information requirements. A major concern in this evaluation process is whether or not a document meets the user's needs. In many document retrieval systems there is no relevant information regarding the content of the documents. This makes it very difficult to evaluate if a document is relevant to the user's initial query. This suggests the need for a method to compare the documents on a word by word basis. Fully automated methods are too complex and difficult to generalize upon. A semiautomated user driven method for document mapping is described in this paper. It should decrease the amount of time required to validate the information content of a query.