Collaborative Information Retrieval: Concepts, Models and Evaluation

International audienceRecent work have shown the potential of collaboration for solving complex or exploratory search tasks allowing to achieve synergic effects with respect to individual search, which is the prevalent information retrieval (IR) setting this last decade. This interactive multiuser context gives rise to several challenges in IR. One main challenge relies on the adaptation of IR techniques or models [8] in order to build algo-rithmic supports of collaboration distributing documents among users. The second challenge is related to the design of Collaborative Information Retrieval (CIR) models and their effectiveness evaluation since individual IR frameworks and measures do not totally fit with the collaboration paradigms. In this tutorial, we address the second challenge and present first a general overview of collaborative search introducing the main underlying notions. Then, we focus on related work dealing with collaborative ranking models and their effectiveness evaluation. Our primary objective is to introduce these notions by highlighting how and why they should be different from individual IR in order to give participants the main clues for investigating new research directions in this domain with a deep understanding of current CIR work

Understanding the Impact of the Role Factor in Collaborative Information Retrieval

International audienceCollaborative information retrieval systems often rely on division of labor policies. Such policies allow work to be divided among collaborators with the aim of preventing redundancy and optimizing the synergic effects of collaboration. Most of the underlying methods achieve these goals by the means of explicit vs. implicit role-based mediation. In this paper, we investigate whether and how different factors, such as users' behavior, search strategies, and effectiveness, are related to role assignment within a collaborative exploratory search. Our main findings suggest that: (1) spontaneous and cohesive implicit roles might emerge during the collaborative search session implying users with no prior roles, and that these implicit roles favor the search precision, (2) role drift might occur alongside the search session performed by users with prior-assigned roles

The contribution of a ‘synergic theory of change’ approach to democratising evaluation

This paper focuses on an evaluation of three projects working with young people in innovative ways to tackle societal alcohol misuse. Rather than presenting the findings of the evaluation per se, the paper presents learning from using theory-based approaches in a collaborative way to evaluate these complex, multi-strand initiatives. Traditional evaluations conducted by academics without collaboration with stakeholders can fail to meet the needs of those delivering interventions. Drawing on interviews with practitioners involved in delivering the projects, the paper adds new evidence to epistemological debates by introducing the notion of a ‘synergic theory of change’, whereby academic expertise and the skills, knowledge and experiences of stakeholders are subject to dialogue, and a theory of change becomes the result of collaborative consensus building. This way of using theory of change in evaluation requires researchers to work in a spirit of co-production and dialogue, and it can move evaluation away from being an exercise that seeks to judge interventions and, by extension, practitioners, to one which prioritises a shared learning journey. Using a synergic theory of change approach has the potential to change the nature of evaluation and lead to a different kind of relationship between researchers and practitioners than traditional methods-based approaches allow

Report of ECol Workshop Report on the First International Workshop on the Evaluation on Collaborative Information Seeking and Retrieval (ECol'2015)

Report of the ECol Workshop @ CIKM 2015The workshop on the evaluation of collaborative information retrieval and seeking (ECol) was held in conjunction with the 24 th Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM) in Melbourne, Australia. The workshop featured three main elements. First, a keynote on the main dimensions, challenges, and opportunities in collaborative information retrieval and seeking by Chirag Shah. Second, an oral presentation session in which four papers were presented. Third, a discussion based on three seed research questions: (1) In what ways is collaborative search evaluation more challenging than individual interactive information retrieval (IIIR) evaluation? (2) Would it be possible and/or useful to standardise experimental designs and data for collaborative search evaluation? and (3) For evaluating collaborative search, can we leverage ideas from other tasks such as diversified search, subtopic mining and/or e-discovery? The discussion was intense and raised many points and issues, leading to the proposition that a new evaluation track focused on collaborative information retrieval/seeking tasks, would be worthwhile

The relationship of (perceived) epistemic cognition to interaction with resources on the internet

Information seeking and processing are key literacy practices. However, they are activities that students, across a range of ages, struggle with. These information seeking processes can be viewed through the lens of epistemic cognition: beliefs regarding the source, justification, complexity, and certainty of knowledge. In the research reported in this article we build on established research in this area, which has typically used self-report psychometric and behavior data, and information seeking tasks involving closed-document sets. We take a novel approach in applying established self-report measures to a large-scale, naturalistic, study environment, pointing to the potential of analysis of dialogue, web-navigation – including sites visited – and other trace data, to support more traditional self-report mechanisms. Our analysis suggests that prior work demonstrating relationships between self-report indicators is not paralleled in investigation of the hypothesized relationships between self-report and trace-indicators. However, there are clear epistemic features of this trace data. The article thus demonstrates the potential of behavioral learning analytic data in understanding how epistemic cognition is brought to bear in rich information seeking and processing tasks

MineRank: Leveraging users’ latent roles for unsupervised collaborative information retrieval

International audienceResearch on collaborative information retrieval (CIR) has shown positive impacts of collaboration on retrieval effectiveness in the case of complex and/or exploratory tasks. The synergic effect of accomplishing something greater than the sum of its individual components is reached through the gathering of collaborators' complementary skills. However, these approaches often lack the consideration that collaborators might refine their skills and actions throughout the search session, and that a flexible system mediation guided by collaborators' behaviors should dynamically adapt to this situation in order to optimize search effectiveness. In this article, we propose a new unsupervised collaborative ranking algorithm which leverages collaborators' actions for (1) mining their latent roles in order to extract their complementary search behaviors; and (2) ranking documents with respect to the latent role of collaborators. Experiments using two user studies with respectively 25 and 10 pairs of collaborators demonstrate the benefit of such an unsupervised method driven by collaborators' behaviors throughout the search session. Also, a qualitative analysis of the identified latent role is proposed to explain an over-learning noticed in one of the datasets

A Collaborative Document Ranking Model for a Multi-faceted Search

International audienceThis paper presents a novel collaborative document ranking model which aims at solving a complex information retrieval task in-volving a multi-faceted information need. For this purpose, we consider a group of users, viewed as experts, who collaborate by addressing the different query facets. We propose a two-step algorithm based on a rele-vance feedback process which first performs a document scoring towards each expert and then allocates documents to the most suitable experts using the Expectation-Maximisation learning-method. The performance improvement is demonstrated through experiments using TREC inter-active benchmark

Answering Twitter Questions: a Model for Recommending Answerers through Social Collaboration

International audienceIn this paper, we specifically consider the challenging task of solving a question posted on Twitter. The latter generally remains unanswered and most of the replies, if any, are only from members of the questioner's neighborhood. As outlined in previous work related to community Q&A, we believe that question-answering is a collaborative process and that the relevant answer to a question post is an aggregation of answer nuggets posted by a group of relevant users. Thus, the problem of identifying the relevant answer turns into the problem of identifying the right group of users who would provide useful answers and would possibly be willing to collaborate together in the long-term. Accordingly, we present a novel method, called CRAQ, that is built on the collaboration paradigm and formulated as a group entropy optimization problem. To optimize the quality of the group, an information gain measure is used to select the most likely " informative " users according to topical and collaboration likelihood predictive features. Crowd-based experiments performed on two crisis-related Twitter datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our collaborative-based answering approach

Strategic Acquisition and its Impact on the Acquired Company

Předkládaná práce se zabývá zhodnocením procesu strategické akvizice českého vodárenského podniku VHOS, a.s. velkou nadnárodní společností Aqualia v rámci jejího pronikání na trhy střední a východní Evropy. Práce analyzuje účel akvizice, strategii a oblast zájmu nabyvatele, zahrnuje fáze výběru společnosti, její přípravy na akvizici včetně due diligence a definuje podmínky její realizace. Výstupem práce je identifikace synergického efektu vyvolaného v případě uskutečnění akvizice a jejího dopadu na fungování akviziční jednotky, definování a návrh provedení nezbytných změn v managementu a organizační struktuře subjektu a návrh opatření a nových aktivit vedoucích k ekonomickým, technických a personálním úsporám a následnému úspěšnému fungování subjektu akvizice.The presented thesis deals with evaluation of process of strategic acquisition of the Czech water company VHOS, a.s. by large multinational enterprise Aqualia within its strategic penetration of the markets of Central and Eastern Europe. The thesis analyses the acquisition aim, strategy and sphere of interest of acquirer, covers the phase of strategic target selection and its preparation for acquisition including due diligence and define the conditions of acquisition realisation. The work outcomes are identification of synergetic effect awakened in case of acquisition realisation and its impact on acquired company’s functioning, definition and suggestion of necessary changes in management and organizational structure and proposal of measures and new activities leading to economic, technical and personal savings and subsequent successful functioning of the acquired company.

SYNERGIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EFFECTIVE INFORMATION AND INTELLIGENCE NEEDS ANALYSIS, UTILIZATION AND SECURITY IN NIGERIA

The general objective of the paper examines critically the synergic relationship between effective information and intelligence needs gathering, analysis and utilization in relation to security situation in Nigeria. Effective pursuit and execution of security needs in every nation depend critically on the conscious security information drive, intelligence gathering, the existence of the necessary security gadgets and apparatus, the zeal of the citizenry to be security conscious and to provide information needed, the will power of the government in place and security institutions to analyze and utilize the available information and intelligence gathered. The challenging problems of study indicate that budgetary funds are made available to security agencies and institutions yet insecurity prevails in Nigeria, lives and properties are destroyed on daily basis, foreign investors relocate out of Nigeria for fear of insecurity, inability of security agencies to pro-actively respond to security demands, seemingly government complicity in curtailing the incessant insecurity, etc. These point to the lack of information and intelligence needs gathering and analysis, lack of relevant modern ICT security equipment and personnel, sharing intelligence information and collaborative efforts among these agencies. The paper is discursive and analytical in methodology. While the paper examined the challenges faced by these agencies and reasons for their ineffectiveness, it avers that, in order to buttress security and grow the economy, the government of Nigeria should, among others, ensure that there are collaborative and effective information and intelligence drive, analysis, sharing and utilization in relation to security pursuit; high technological military hardware for surveillance should be in use; sentiments, individualism, exclusionism, ethnicity and parochialism should not be above national interest; economy should be boosted through job creation, employment, empowerment, entrepreneurship, industrialization and manufacture to mitigate the burden on the agencies and create opportunity for individuals and institutions to explore their potentials and the economy to blossom.  Article visualizations