Testing the cluster hypothesis in distributed information retrieval

How to merge and organise query results retrieved from different resources is one of the key issues in distributed information retrieval. Some previous research and experiments suggest that cluster-based document browsing is more effective than a single merged list. Cluster-based retrieval results presentation is based on the cluster hypothesis, which states that documents that cluster together have a similar relevance to a given query. However, while this hypothesis has been demonstrated to hold in classical information retrieval environments, it has never been fully tested in heterogeneous distributed information retrieval environments. Heterogeneous document representations, the presence of document duplicates, and disparate qualities of retrieval results, are major features of an heterogeneous distributed information retrieval environment that might disrupt the effectiveness of the cluster hypothesis. In this paper we report on an experimental investigation into the validity and e...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2006
• Where: IPM
• Authors: Fabio Crestani, Shengli Wu
• Keywords: Cluster Hypothesis, Heterogeneous Distributed Information, Information Retrieval Environments, IPM 2006