Discusses the inclusion of contextual information in indexing and retrieval systems to improve results and the ability to carry out text analysis by means of linguistic knowledge. Presents research that investigated whether discourse variables have an impact on information and retrieval and classification algorithms. (Author/LRW)

Describes a microcomputer-based string index format generated from concept networks using multiple search terms. Link weighting is highlighted as a method to decide which term appears first so the entry reflects the classification implied by the search specification. The computer software used for this system is briefly described. (Author/LRW)

Describes an algorithm for the calculation of term discrimination values that may be used when the interdocument similarity measure used is the cosine coefficient and when the document representations have been weighted using one particular term weighting scheme. (7 references) (Author/CLB)

Discussion of the failure of individual keywords to identify conceptual content of documents in retrieval systems highlights Metric Similarity Modeling, a method for creating vector space representation of documents based on modeling target interdocument similarity values. Semantic relatedness, latent semantic indexing, an indexing and retrieval…

Examines the retrieval effectiveness of five hierarchical clustering methods (single link, complete link, group average, Ward's method, and weighted average) as a function of indexing exhaustivity with four test collections. Evaluations of retrieval effectiveness are based on three measures of optimal retrieval performance. (Author/LRW)

High impact astronomy journals were identified by using a methodology called Discipline-Contribution Score (DCS). The DCS algorithm was used to track citations of 33 nonrecognized astronomy journals, as well as to measure contributions to astronomy by multisubfield physics and multidisciplinary journals. (JKP)

Presents a modification function for weights of descriptors for documents in fuzzy retrieval systems which includes some desirable properties that are lacking in the model proposed by Choros and Danilowicz in their study on relative indexing. (MBR)

Describes exploratory experiments in evaluating and improving a thesaurus through studying its effect on retrieval. A formula was developed to measure the conceptual distance between queries and documents encoded as sets of thesaurus terms. Comparison to the performance of people judging conceptual distance shows that the formula accurately…

Discussion of index construction for large text collections highlights a new indexing algorithm designed to create large compressed inverted indexes "in situ." Topics include a computational model, inversion, index compression, merging, experimental test results, effect on retrieval performance, memory restrictions, and dynamic…

Presents principles for determining profile of a system user based on analysis of co-occurrence of index terms in queries and pertinent documents. A procedure for determining index term weights, the information value of which depends on the degree of homogeneity of system users, is introduced. Three references are cited. (EJS)

Highlights semantic links and shows how the semantic content of hypertext links can be used for information retrieval. Discussion includes indexing and retrieval algorithms that exploit link content and node content; retrieval strategies exploiting semantic links, including conventional retrieval and constrained spreading activation techniques;…

Describes an indexing technique based on overlapping word fragments as reference strings that are linked in a directed graph structure which makes possible exact match-, partial match-, and masked-partial match-retrieval and indicates search strategies for each case. Eight figures, two tables, and nine references are provided. (RBF)

Discussion of the information needs of medical professionals and researchers focuses on the architecture of a Web portal designed to integrate advanced searching and indexing algorithms, an automatic thesaurus, and self-organizing map technologies to provide searchers with fine-grained results. Reports results of evaluation of spider algorithms…

Presents a theoretical rationale for employing a form of information retrieval algorithm that helps searchers better navigate through large document collections by continually revising probability estimates for document subsets. The algorithm avoids assumptions of index term independence and predicts relevance more accurately with increasing…

Describes the two basic approaches to the calculation of term discrimination values for automatic indexing. The results of an experiment that investigated the differences between algorithms of these two approaches in terms of their impact on the discrimination value model are reported and discussed. (13 references) (Author/CLB)