Journal article
Query expansion and MEDLINE
Information processing & management, Vol.32(4), pp.431-443
1996
DOI: 10.1016/0306-4573(95)00076-3
Abstract
This paper evaluates the retrieval effectiveness of query expansion strategies on a MEDLINE test collection using Cornell University's SMART retrieval system. Three expansion strategies are tested on their ability to identify appropriate McSH terms for user queries: expansion using an inter-field statistical thesaurus, expansion via retrieval feedback and expansion using a combined approach. These expansion strategies do not require prior relevance decisions. The study compares retrieval effectiveness using the original unexpanded and the alternative expanded user queries on a collection of 75 queries and 2334 MEDLINE citations. Retrieval effectiveness is assessed using eleven point average precision scores (11-AvgP). The combination of expansion using the thesaurus followed by retrieval feedback gives the best improvement of 17% over a baseline performance of 0.5169 11-AvgP. However this improvement is almost identical to that achieved by expansion via retrieval feedback (16.4%). Query expansion using the inter-field thesaurus gives a significant but lower performance improvement (9.9%) over the same baseline. This study recommends query expansion using retrieval feedback for adding McSH search terms to a user's initial query.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Query expansion and MEDLINE
- Creators
- Padmini Srinivasan - Department of Computer Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, U.S.A
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Information processing & management, Vol.32(4), pp.431-443
- DOI
- 10.1016/0306-4573(95)00076-3
- ISSN
- 0306-4573
- eISSN
- 1873-5371
- Publisher
- Elsevier Ltd
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 1996
- Academic Unit
- Nursing; Computer Science; Business Analytics
- Record Identifier
- 9984003015002771
Metrics
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