Presents criteria for an effective syntagmatic relator system and describes how conceptual syntagmatic relationships are expressed in natural language, commenting on the adequacy of such expressions for document retrieval systems. Only one type of expression, a gestalt structure, represented as a frame, conforms to the criteria. (Author/JKP)

Describes a study that explored the relationship between the number of cited references used in a citation search and retrieval effectiveness, analyzing the overlap among posting sets retrieved by various combinations of cited references. Findings showed that the more cited references used for a citation search result, the better the performance.…

Identifies limitations in the use of term co-occurrence data as a basis for automatic query expansion in natural language document retrieval systems. The use of similarity coefficients to calculate the degree of similarity between pairs of terms is explained, and frequency and discriminatory characteristics for nearest neighbors of query terms are…

Presents an investigation into situational characteristics and their relationship to factors affecting graduate students' judgments of the relevance of information; proposes new student orientation as an exercise in information retrieval; and explains a process model of socialization to meet new students' information needs. (Contains 14…

Reports on a comparative investigation of WAIS, a networking and finding aid used on the Internet, and a Boolean-based retrieval system. The terms and limitations of the study are described, and the comparative recall and precision rates are given. The problems and potential of WAIS and other highly interactive search systems are presented.…

Discusses relevance and its role in evaluating the effectiveness of information retrieval. Highlights include an information retrieval interaction model; a review of research; evaluation and measurement, including recall and precision and utility and user satisfaction; judges and judgment conditions; user criteria; decision making; and cognitive…

Provides an overview of research on individual user differences and relevance in information retrieval. An experiment with a two-stage information retrieval system, using a topical set of document representations produced by a Boolean search and a citation profile is described. Implications for information retrieval are explored. (Contains 32…

Discusses query formulation in information retrieval systems within the framework of adaptive linear models. User preference is emphasized, acceptable ranking strategies are described, query formulation and inductive learning are discussed, relevance feedback and probabilistic approaches are examined, and problems encountered in the design of an…

Demonstrates that if the similarity function of a retrieval system leads to a (pseudo-) metric, the retrieval, similarity and Everett-Cater metric topology coincide and are different from the discrete topology; this is the case if documents are represented by lists, using the Jaccard similarity measure. The corresponding metric is the…

Proposes a linguistic model for an Information Retrieval System (IRS) defined using an ordinal fuzzy linguistic approach. The query subsystem accepts Boolean queries with terms weighted by ordinal linguistic values and the evaluation subsystem returns documents arranged in relevance classes labeled with ordinal linguistic values. The system gives…

Discussion of relevance provides an overview to this special issue on relevance research. Topics addressed include user-centered criteria that affect relevance judgments; information-seeking behavior; the need for appropriate research methodologies; models for system design and evaluation; and approaches to facilitate further research, including…

Examines the information seeking and evaluative behavior of attorneys and explores the dynamic mental models attorneys construct. Highlights include domain-specific relevance; cognitive maps; current research on the retrieval performance of two full-text legal databases, LEXIS and WESTLAW; and implications of attorneys' mental models for legal…

Discusses topical relevance and situational relevance, which takes into account the impact of the retrieval system on the user, in the context of medicine. Topics addressed include scientific validity; limitations of current evaluation methodology, including recall and precision; and a framework for future retrieval research based on an…

Examines the importance of relevance criteria in end-user evaluation of valuable or high relevant information as users move through six stages of information seeking proposed by Kuhlthau (1994) and as they selected, obtained, and read information sources. Respondents were enrolled in graduate studies at the University of North Texas and Texas…

This study of students at the University of Tampere (Finland) analyzes how changes in relevance criteria are related to changes in problem stages during the task performance process in information retrieval. Provides a conceptual framework, including Kuhlthau's information search process model and prior knowledge; and compares bibliographic…