Visual exploration and retrieval of XML document collections with the generic system X2

This article reports on the XML retrieval system X2 which has been developed at the University of Munich over the last five years. In a typical session with X2, the user first browses a structural summary of the XML database in order to select interesting elements and keywords occurring in documents. Using this intermediate result, queries combining structure and textual references are composed semiautomatically. After query evaluation, the full set of answers is presented in a visual and structured way. X2 largely exploits the structure found in documents, queries and answers to enable new interactive visualization and exploration techniques that support mixed IR and database-oriented querying, thus bridging the gap between these three views on the data to be retrieved. Another salient characteristic of X2 which distinguishes it from other visual query systems for XML is that it supports various degrees of detailedness in the presentation of answers, as well as techniques for dynamically reordering and grouping retrieved elements once the complete answer set has been computed

Browsing citation clusters for academic literature search: a simulation study with systematic reviews

Algorithms and the Foundations of Software technolog

Self-Organizing File Cabinet

This thesis presents a self-organized file cabinet. This file cabinet uses electronic information to augment the physical world. By using a scanner to transform documents into electronic files, the self-organized file cabinet can index the documents on visual and textual information. The self-organized file cabinet helps the user find the documents at a later date. The focus of this thesis is on the design and evaluation of the self-organized file cabinet. User studies show that this tool is natural to use

Visualizing a Field of Research: A Methodology of Systematic Scientometric Reviews

Systematic scientometric reviews, empowered by scientometric and visual analytic techniques, offer opportunities to improve the timeliness, accessibility, and reproducibility of conventional systematic reviews. While increasingly accessible science mapping tools enable end users to visualize the structure and dynamics of a research field, a common bottleneck in the current practice is the construction of a collection of scholarly publications as the input of the subsequent scientometric analysis and visualization. End users often have to face a dilemma in the preparation process: the more they know about a knowledge domain, the easier it is for them to find the relevant data to meet their needs adequately; the little they know, the harder the problem is. What can we do to avoid missing something valuable but beyond our initial description? In this article, we introduce a flexible and generic methodology, cascading citation expansion, to increase the quality of constructing a bibliographic dataset for systematic reviews. Furthermore, the methodology simplifies the conceptualization of globalism and localism in science mapping and unifies them on a consistent and continuous spectrum. We demonstrate an application of the methodology to the research of literature-based discovery and compare five datasets constructed based on three use scenarios, namely a conventional keyword-based search (one dataset), an expansion process starting with a groundbreaking article of the knowledge domain (two datasets), and an expansion process starting with a recently published review article by a prominent expert in the domain (two datasets). The unique coverage of each of the datasets is inspected through network visualization overlays with reference to other datasets in a broad and integrated context.Comment: 17 figures, 3 table

Designing Systems that Support the Blogosphere for Deliberative Discourse

Web 2.0 has great potential to serve as a public sphere (Habermas, 1974; Habermas, 1989) – a distributed arena of voices where all who want to do so can participate. A well-functioning public sphere is important for pluralistic decision-making at many levels, ranging from small organizations to society at large. In this paper, we analyze the capability of the blogosphere in its current form to support such a role. This analysis leads to the identification of the principal issues that prevent the blogosphere from realizing its full potential as a public sphere. Most significantly, we propose that the sheer volume of content overwhelms blog readers, forcing them to restrict themselves to only a small subset of valuable content. This ultimately reduces their level of informedness. Based on past research on managing discourse, we propose four design artifacts that would alleviate these issues: a communal repository, textual clustering, visual cues, and a participation facility for blog users. We present a prototype system, called FeedWiz, which implements several of these design artifacts. Based on this initial design, we formulate a research agenda for the creation of new tools that effectively harness the potential of the growing body of user-generated content in the blogosphere and beyond

A study on academic search engines: comparison between dynamic queries and regular faceted search

Dynamic queries interfaces provide a powerful and fun way to search information. Using this technique with a faceted navigation can be very effective for academic researchers who are often engaged in exploratory searches. Facets can play an important role in helping the user understand an information space better. Dynamic queries techniques make the search results immediate and the interaction uninterrupted and focused. They can contribute to the user\u27s understanding of the researched topic(s). Furthermore, they are more playful because users directly manipulate controls and the results are displayed through transition animations, which bring the process closer to a game experience (e.g., moving a slider that rearranges the available products). The study compares for the first time (to the researcher\u27s knowledge) regular faceted search to dynamic queries specifically for academic content. Two academic search engines were developed and compared: a regular faceted interface and a dynamic queries interface. Several strengths and weaknesses were identified in both systems. The dynamic queries prototype has the potential to deliver a greater experience with the appropriate back-end technology and design considerations discussed in this thesis

Modelling interaction with economic models of search

Understanding how people interact when searching is central to the study of Interactive Information Retrieval (IIR). Most of the prior work has either been conceptual, observational or empirical. While this has led to numerous insights and findings regarding the interaction between users and systems, the theory has lagged behind. In this paper, we extend the recently proposed search economic theory to make the model more realistic. We then derive eight interaction based hypotheses regarding search behaviour. To validate the model, we explore whether the search behaviour of thirty-six participants from a lab based study is consistent with the theory. Our analysis shows that observed search behaviours are in line with predicted search behaviours and that it is possible to provide credible explanations for such behaviours. This work describes a concise and compact representation of search behaviour providing a strong theoretical basis for future IIR research