The implications of some major linguistic and semiotic concepts for the machine manipulation of natural language text are examined. It is proposed that the study of meaning should contribute to the development of sophisticated algorithms for machine indexing. (Author)

The metainformational approach represents some attempts to transform the implicit retrieval information contained in primary documents to an explicit information structure. (Author/PF)

Reviews the state of the art in automatic indexing, concentrating on the literature from 1968 to 1973. (Author/PF)

Goffman's indirect method and a MeSH tree structure were used to classify a set of 109 medical documents. (PF)

An automatic classification technique has been developed, based on the character structure of words. (Author)

Describes technique developed as automatic support to subject heading indexing at BIOSIS based on use of formalized language for semantic representation of biological texts and subject headings. Language structures, experimental results, and analysis of journal/subject heading and author/subject heading correlation data are discussed. References…

PRECIS, The Preserved Context Index System, is explained in detail. (AP)

Describes a prototype system for interactive knowledge-based indexing of the medical literature. Topics covered include current indexing practice; knowledge-based systems using frames; various types of assistance provided by the prototype system; and current research activities and plans for the development of the system. (17 references) (CLB)

Discussion of automatic indexing in information retrieval systems focuses on attempts to improve the indexing representation produced by the FASIT system. Concept selection and concept grouping are explained; improving disambiguation is discussed; and a retrieval experiment to test the effectiveness of the disambiguation using the cystic fibrosis…

Describes experiments that compared a new method for automatically analyzing semantic structures in text by statistical means with the standard vector space model. Findings indicate that combining both methods improved performance over either alone. The effects of other experimental variables on retrieval performance (term weighting, suffix…

Discussion of human intellectual indexing versus automatic indexing focuses on automatic indexing. Topics include keyword indexing; negative vocabulary control; counting words; comparative counting and weighting; stemming; words versus phrases; clustering; latent semantic indexing; citation indexes; bibliographic coupling; co-citation; relevance…

Describes the possible improvements in the quality of automatic indexing systems gained by using complex descriptors, and reports on the effectiveness of a simple nonsyntactic phrase indexing procedure. The discussion covers shortcomings of this approach, possible methods for improvement, and areas needing further research. (43 references) (CLB)

Outlines an approach to the automatic construction of a knowledge base resulting in a system that is able in each phase of its construction to acquire domain knowledge from all new information that it is building, particularly index terms. Topics covered include production rules, the use of semantic networks, and user interfaces. (32 references)…

Describes a new method for automatic indexing and retrieval called latent semantic indexing (LSI). Problems with matching query words with document words in term-based information retrieval systems are discussed, semantic structure is examined, singular value decomposition (SVD) is explained, and the mathematics underlying the SVD model is…