Fabio Crestani

Mounia Lalmas

Cornelis Joost van Rijsbergen

In recent years, there have been several attempts to define a logic for information retrieval (IR). The aim was to provide a rich and uniform representation of information and its semantics with the goal of improving retrieval effectiveness. The basis of a logical model for IR is the assumption that queries and documents can be represented effectively by logical formulae. To retrieve a document, an IR system has to infer the formula representing the query from the formula representing the document. This logical interpretation of query and document emphasizes that relevance in IR is an inference process. The use of logic to build IR models enables one to obtain models that are more general than earlier well-known IR models. Indeed, some logical models are able to represent within a uniform framework various features of IR systems such as hypermedia links, multimedia data, and user's knowledge. Logic also provides a common approach to the integration of IR systems with logical database systems. Finally, logic makes it possible to reason about an IR model and its properties. This latter possibility is becoming increasingly more important since conventional evaluation methods, although good indicators of the effectiveness of IR systems, often give results which cannot be predicted, or for that matter satisfactorily explained. However, logic by itself cannot fully model IR. The success or the failure of the inference of the query formula from the document formula is not enough to model relevance in IR. It is necessary to take into account the uncertainty inherent in such an inference process. In 1986, Van Rijsbergen proposed the uncertainty logical principle to model relevance as an uncertain inference process. When proposing the principle, Van Rijsbergen was not specific about which logic and which uncertainty theory to use. As a consequence, various logics and uncertainty theories have been proposed and investigated. The choice of an appropriate logic and uncertainty mechanism has been a main research theme in logical IR modeling leading to a number of logical IR models over the years. Information Retrieval: Uncertainty and Logics contains a collection of exciting papers proposing, developing and implementing logical IR models. This book is appropriate for use as a text for a graduate-level course on Information Retrieval or Database Systems, and as a reference for researchers and practitioners in industry.

Advanced Models for the Representation and Retrieval of Information

Information Retrieval: Uncertainty and Logics

Stefan Rüger

Andrew MacFarlane

Anastasios Tombros

Theodora Tsikrika

Alexei Yavlinsky

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 28th European Conference on Information Retrieval Research, ECIR 2006, held in London, April 2006. The 37 revised full papers and 28 revised poster papers presented are organized in topical sections on formal models, document and query representation and text understanding, topic identification and news retrieval, clustering and classification, refinement and feedback, performance and peer-to-peer networks, Web search, cross-language retrieval, genomic IR, and much more.

28th European Conference on IR Research, ECIR 2006, London, UK, April 10-12, 2006, Proceedings

Advances in Information Retrieval

Heather O'Brien

Elad Yom-Tov

User engagement refers to the quality of the user experience that emphasizes the positive aspects of interacting with an online application and, in particular, the desire to use that application longer and repeatedly. User engagement is a key concept in the design of online applications (whether for desktop, tablet or mobile), motivated by the observation that successful applications are not just used, but are engaged with. Users invest time, attention, and emotion in their use of technology, and seek to satisfy pragmatic and hedonic needs. Measurement is critical for evaluating whether online applications are able to successfully engage users, and may inform the design of and use of applications. User engagement is a multifaceted, complex phenomenon; this gives rise to a number of potential measurement approaches. Common ways to evaluate user engagement include using self-report measures, e.g., questionnaires; observational methods, e.g. facial expression analysis, speech analysis; neuro-physiological signal processing methods, e.g., respiratory and cardiovascular accelerations and decelerations, muscle spasms; and web analytics, e.g., number of site visits, click depth. These methods represent various trade-offs in terms of the setting (laboratory versus ``in the wild''), object of measurement (user behaviour, affect or cognition) and scale of data collected. For instance, small-scale user studies are deep and rich, but limited in terms of generalizability, whereas large-scale web analytic studies are powerful but negate users' motivation and context. The focus of this book is how user engagement is currently being measured and various considerations for its measurement. Our goal is to leave readers with an appreciation of the various ways in which to measure user engagement, and their associated strengths and weaknesses. We emphasize the multifaceted nature of user engagement and the unique contextual constraints that come to bear upon attempts to measure engagement in different settings, and across different user groups and web domains. At the same time, this book advocates for the development of ``good'' measures and good measurement practices that will advance the study of user engagement and improve our understanding of this construct, which has become so vital in our wired world. Table of Contents: Preface / Acknowledgments / Introduction and Scope / Approaches Based on Self-Report Methods / Approaches Based on Physiological Measurements / Approaches Based on Web Analytics / Beyond Desktop, Single Site, and Single Task / Enhancing the Rigor of User Engagement Methods and Measures / Conclusions and Future Research Directions / Bibliography / Authors' Biographies / Index

Measuring User Engagement

Norbert Fuhr

Saadia Malik

Zoltán Szlávik

The ultimate goal of many information access systems (e.g., digital libraries, the Web, intranets) is to provide the right content to their end-users. This content is increasingly a mixture of text, multimedia, and metadata, and is formatted according to the adopted –W3C standard for information repositories, the so-called eXtensible Markup L- guage (XML). Whereas many of today’s information access systems still treat do- ments as single large (text) blocks, XML offers the opportunity to exploit the internal structure of documents in order to allow for more precise access thus providing more specific answers to user requests. Providing effective access to XML-based content is therefore a key issue for the success of these systems. The aim of the INEX campaign (Initiative for the Evaluation of XML Retrieval), which was set up at the beginning of 2002, is to establish infrastructures, XML test suites, and appropriate measurements for evaluating the performance of information retrieval systems that aim at giving effective access to XML content. More precisely, the goal of the INEX initiative is to provide means, in the form of a large XML test collection and appropriate scoring methods, for the evaluation of content-oriented XML retrieval systems.

Third International Workshop of the Initiative for the Evaluation of XML Retrieval, INEX 2004, Dagstuhl Castle, Germany, December 6-8, 2004

Advances in XML Information Retrieval

Joemon Jose

Andreas Rauber

Roberto Sebastiani

Ingo Frommholz

In the 14 years since its ?rst edition back in 1997, the European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries (ECDL) has become the reference meeting for an interdisciplinary community of researchers and practitioners whose professional activities revolve around the theme of d- th ital libraries. This volume contains the proceedings of ECDL 2010, the 14 conference in this series, which, following Pisa (1997), Heraklion (1998), Paris (1999),Lisbon(2000),Darmstadt(2001),Rome(2002),Trondheim(2003),Bath (2004), Vienna (2005), Alicante (2006), Budapest (2007), Aarhus (2008), and Corfu (2009), was held in Glasgow, UK, during September 6–10, 2010. th Asidefrombeingthe14 edition of ECDL, this was also the last, at least with this name since starting with 2011, ECDL will be renamed (so as to avoid acronym con?icts with the European Computer Driving Licence) to TPLD, standing for the Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries. We hope you all will join us for TPDL 2011 in Berlin! For ECDL 2010 separate calls for papers, posters and demos were issued, - sulting in the submission to the conference of 102 full papers, 40 posters and 13 demos. This year, for the full papers, ECDL experimented with a novel, two-tier reviewing model, with the aim of further improving the quality of the resu- ing program. A ?rst-tier Program Committee of 87 members was formed, and a further Senior Program Committee composed of 15 senior members of the DL community was set up.

14th European Conference, ECDL 2010, Glasgow, UK, September 6-10, 2010, Proceedings

Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries

Mounia Lalmas

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