• Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice
• /
• v.9 no.2
• /
• pp.1-17
• /
• 2021

Pseudo relevance feedback (PRF) is a powerful query expansion (QE) technique that prepares queries using the top k pseudorelevant documents and choosing expansion elements. Traditional PRF frameworks have robustly handled vocabulary mismatch corresponding to user queries and pertinent documents; nevertheless, expansion elements are chosen, disregarding similarity to the original query's elements. Word embedding (WE) schemes comprise techniques of significant interest concerning QE, that falls within the information retrieval domain. Deep averaging networks (DANs) defines a framework relying on average word presence passed through multiple linear layers. The complete query is understandably represented using the average vector comprising the query terms. The vector may be employed for determining expansion elements pertinent to the entire query. In this study, we suggest a DANs-based technique that augments PRF frameworks by integrating WE similarities to facilitate Arabic information retrieval. The technique is based on the fundamental that the top pseudo-relevant document set is assessed to determine candidate element distribution and select expansion terms appropriately, considering their similarity to the average vector representing the initial query elements. The Word2Vec model is selected for executing the experiments on a standard Arabic TREC 2001/2002 set. The majority of the evaluations indicate that the PRF implementation in the present study offers a significant performance improvement compared to that of the baseline PRF frameworks.

• Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice
• /
• v.12 no.3
• /
• pp.36-48
• /
• 2024

The information retrieval (IR) process often encounters a challenge known as query-document vocabulary mismatch, where user queries do not align with document content, impacting search effectiveness. Automatic query expansion (AQE) techniques aim to mitigate this issue by augmenting user queries with related terms or synonyms. Word embedding, particularly Word2Vec, has gained prominence for AQE due to its ability to represent words as real-number vectors. However, AQE methods typically expand individual query terms, potentially leading to query drift if not carefully selected. To address this, researchers propose utilizing median vectors derived from deep median networks to capture query similarity comprehensively. Integrating median vectors into candidate term generation and combining them with the BM25 probabilistic model and two IR strategies (EQE1 and V2Q) yields promising results, outperforming baseline methods in experimental settings.

• Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice
• /
• v.8 no.4
• /
• pp.67-86
• /
• 2020

Information need has been one of the main motivations for a person using a search engine. Queries can represent very different information needs. Ironically, a query can be a poor representation of the information need because the user can find it difficult to express the information need. Query Expansion (QE) is being popularly used to address this limitation. While QE can be considered as a language-independent technique, recent findings have shown that in certain cases, language plays an important role. Arabic is a language with a particularly large vocabulary rich in words with synonymous shades of meaning and has high morphological complexity. This paper, therefore, provides a review on QE for Arabic information retrieval, the intention being to identify the recent state-of-the-art of this burgeoning area. In this review, we primarily discuss statistical QE approaches that include document analysis, search, browse log analyses, and web knowledge analyses, in addition to the semantic QE approaches, which use semantic knowledge structures to extract meaningful word relationships. Finally, our conclusion is that QE regarding the Arabic language is subjected to additional investigation and research due to the intricate nature of this language.