33,238 research outputs found
Combining relevance information in a synchronous collaborative information retrieval environment
Traditionally information retrieval (IR) research has focussed on a single user interaction modality, where a user searches to satisfy an information need. Recent
advances in both web technologies, such as the sociable web of Web 2.0, and computer hardware, such as tabletop interface devices, have enabled multiple users to collaborate on many computer-related tasks. Due to these advances there is an increasing need to support
two or more users searching together at the same time, in order to satisfy a shared information need, which we refer to as Synchronous Collaborative Information Retrieval.
Synchronous Collaborative Information Retrieval (SCIR) represents a significant paradigmatic shift from traditional IR systems. In order to support an effective SCIR search, new techniques are required to coordinate users' activities. In this chapter we explore the effectiveness of a sharing of knowledge policy on a collaborating group. Sharing of knowledge refers to the process of passing relevance information across users,
if one user finds items of relevance to the search task then the group should benefit in the form of improved ranked lists returned to each searcher.
In order to evaluate the proposed techniques we simulate two users searching together through an incremental feedback system. The simulation assumes that users decide on an initial query with which to begin the collaborative search and proceed through the search by providing relevance judgments to the system and receiving a new ranked list. In order to populate these simulations we extract data from the interaction logs of various
experimental IR systems from previous Text REtrieval Conference (TREC) workshops
Incorporating Clicks, Attention and Satisfaction into a Search Engine Result Page Evaluation Model
Modern search engine result pages often provide immediate value to users and
organize information in such a way that it is easy to navigate. The core
ranking function contributes to this and so do result snippets, smart
organization of result blocks and extensive use of one-box answers or side
panels. While they are useful to the user and help search engines to stand out,
such features present two big challenges for evaluation. First, the presence of
such elements on a search engine result page (SERP) may lead to the absence of
clicks, which is, however, not related to dissatisfaction, so-called "good
abandonments." Second, the non-linear layout and visual difference of SERP
items may lead to non-trivial patterns of user attention, which is not captured
by existing evaluation metrics.
In this paper we propose a model of user behavior on a SERP that jointly
captures click behavior, user attention and satisfaction, the CAS model, and
demonstrate that it gives more accurate predictions of user actions and
self-reported satisfaction than existing models based on clicks alone. We use
the CAS model to build a novel evaluation metric that can be applied to
non-linear SERP layouts and that can account for the utility that users obtain
directly on a SERP. We demonstrate that this metric shows better agreement with
user-reported satisfaction than conventional evaluation metrics.Comment: CIKM2016, Proceedings of the 25th ACM International Conference on
Information and Knowledge Management. 201
Contextualised Browsing in a Digital Library's Living Lab
Contextualisation has proven to be effective in tailoring \linebreak search
results towards the users' information need. While this is true for a basic
query search, the usage of contextual session information during exploratory
search especially on the level of browsing has so far been underexposed in
research. In this paper, we present two approaches that contextualise browsing
on the level of structured metadata in a Digital Library (DL), (1) one variant
bases on document similarity and (2) one variant utilises implicit session
information, such as queries and different document metadata encountered during
the session of a users. We evaluate our approaches in a living lab environment
using a DL in the social sciences and compare our contextualisation approaches
against a non-contextualised approach. For a period of more than three months
we analysed 47,444 unique retrieval sessions that contain search activities on
the level of browsing. Our results show that a contextualisation of browsing
significantly outperforms our baseline in terms of the position of the first
clicked item in the result set. The mean rank of the first clicked document
(measured as mean first relevant - MFR) was 4.52 using a non-contextualised
ranking compared to 3.04 when re-ranking the result lists based on similarity
to the previously viewed document. Furthermore, we observed that both
contextual approaches show a noticeably higher click-through rate. A
contextualisation based on document similarity leads to almost twice as many
document views compared to the non-contextualised ranking.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, paper accepted at JCDL 201
CHORUS Deliverable 2.2: Second report - identification of multi-disciplinary key issues for gap analysis toward EU multimedia search engines roadmap
After addressing the state-of-the-art during the first year of Chorus and establishing the existing landscape in
multimedia search engines, we have identified and analyzed gaps within European research effort during our second year.
In this period we focused on three directions, notably technological issues, user-centred issues and use-cases and socio-
economic and legal aspects. These were assessed by two central studies: firstly, a concerted vision of functional breakdown
of generic multimedia search engine, and secondly, a representative use-cases descriptions with the related discussion on
requirement for technological challenges. Both studies have been carried out in cooperation and consultation with the
community at large through EC concertation meetings (multimedia search engines cluster), several meetings with our
Think-Tank, presentations in international conferences, and surveys addressed to EU projects coordinators as well as
National initiatives coordinators. Based on the obtained feedback we identified two types of gaps, namely core
technological gaps that involve research challenges, and “enablers”, which are not necessarily technical research
challenges, but have impact on innovation progress. New socio-economic trends are presented as well as emerging legal
challenges
Meeting of the MINDS: an information retrieval research agenda
Since its inception in the late 1950s, the field of Information Retrieval (IR) has developed tools that help people find, organize, and analyze information. The key early influences on the field are well-known. Among them are H. P. Luhn's pioneering work, the development of the vector space retrieval model by Salton and his students, Cleverdon's development of the Cranfield experimental methodology, Spärck Jones' development of idf, and a series of probabilistic retrieval models by Robertson and Croft. Until the development of the WorldWideWeb (Web), IR was of greatest interest to professional information analysts such as librarians, intelligence analysts, the legal community, and the pharmaceutical industry
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