The concept of relevance in Information Retrieval

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2178-2075.incid.2024.206701

Keywords:

Information Retrieval, Information Science, Relevance, Relevance Models and Theories

Abstract

This work aims to present a bibliographical survey on the concept of relevance, its properties and characteristics, as well as systematizing its manifestations and its use in Information Science, particularly in the process of information retrieval. To achieve this, the research was based on a bibliographical survey of several authors who have relevance as an object of study. It found that the concept of relevance has several formal definitions and can be interpreted in different ways. Relevance is also strongly linked to information retrieval systems. In this context, it can be classified under two approaches: user relevance and system relevance. From the results, we conclude that relevance plays a fundamental role in Information Science, with emphasis on the information retrieval process, which often uses this concept as a metric to evaluate the effectiveness of algorithms and systems.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biographies

  • Jorge Janaite Neto, Universidade Estadual Paulista - Campus de Marília

    Doutor em Ciência da Informação pela Universidade Estadual Paulista, UNESP, Brasil; Analista de Informática na Universidade Estadual Paulista, UNESP, campus de Marília, SP, Brasil.

  • Edberto Ferneda, Universidade Estadual Paulista - Campus de Marília

    Doutor em Ciências da Comunicação pela Universidade de São Paulo, USP, Brasil; Professor Associado da Universidade Estadual Paulista, UNESP, campus de Marília, SP, Brasil.

References

BAEZA-YATES, R. A.; RIBEIRO-NETO, B. A. Modern information retrieval: the concepts and technology behind search. [S. l.]: Addison Wesley, 2011.

BELKIN, N. J. People interacting with information. SIGIR Forum, v. 49, n. 2, p. 13-27, 2015.

BORLUND, P. The concept of relevance in IR. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, v. 54, n. 10, p. 913-925, 2003.

COOPER, W. S. A definition of relevance for information retrieval. Information Storage and Retrieval, v. 7, p. 19-37, 1971.

DERVIN, B. NILAN, M. S. Information needs and uses: a conceptual and methodological review. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, v. 21, p. 3-33, 1986.

GARCIA-MOLINA, H.; KOUTRIKA, G.; PARAMESWARAN, A. Information seeking: convergence of search, recommendations, and advertising. Communications of the ACM, v. 54, n. 11, p. 121, 2011.

HARTER, S. P. Psychological relevance and information science. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, v. 53, n. 4, p. 257-270, 1992.

INGWERSEN, P.; JÄRVELIN, K. The turn: integration of information seeking and retrieval in context. Dordrecht: Springer, 2005.

JU, B.; GLUCK, M. Calibrating information users’ views on relevance: a social representations approach. Journal of Information Science, v. 37, n. 4, p. 429-438, 2011.

KELLY, D. Measuring online information seeking context. Part 1: background and method. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, v. 57, n. 3, p. 1729-1739, 2006.

MIZZARO, S. Relevance: the whole history. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, v. 48, n. 9, p. 810–832, 1997.

MIZZARO, S. How many relevances in information retrieval? Interacting with Computers, v. 10, n. 3, p. 303-320, 1998.

RELEVÂNCIA. In: DICIO: dicionário online de português. Porto: 7Graus. c2019. Disponível em: https://www.dicio.com.br/relevancia/. Acesso em: 24 out. 2022.

RUTHVEN, I. Integrating approaches to relevance. In: SPINK, A.; COLE, C. (Eds.) New directions in cognitive information retrieval. Berlin: Springer, 2005. p. 61-80.

SARACEVIC, T. Relevance reconsidered. In: INGWERSEN, Peter; PORS, Niels Ole. Proceedings COLIS 2: second conference on conceptions of Library and Information Science. Copenhagen: Royal School of Librarianship, 1996. p. 201-208.

SARACEVIC, T. The stratified model of information retrieval interaction: extension and applications. Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science, n. 34, p. 313 327, 1997.

SARACEVIC, T. Information science. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, v. 50, n. 12, p. 1051, 1999.

SARACEVIC, T. Relevance: a review of the literature and a framework for thinking on the notion in information science. Part II: nature and manifestations of relevance. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, v. 58, n. 3, p. 1915-193, 2007.

SARACEVIC, T. The notion of relevance in information science: everybody knows what relevance is: but, what is it really? [S. l.]: Morgan & Claypool, 2017.

SARACEVIC, T.; KANTOR, P. A study of information seeking and retrieving: III. searchers, searches, and overlap. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, v. 39, n. 3, 197-216, 1988.

SARACEVIC, T. Relevance: a review of and a framework for the thinking on the notion of information science. Journal of American Society for Information Science, v. 26, n. 6, p. 321-343, 1975.

SCHAMBER, L.; EISENBERG, M. B.; NILAN, M. S. A re-examination of relevance: Toward a dynamic, situational definition. Information Processing & Management, v. 26, n. 6, p. 755-776, 1990.

SCHUTZ, A. Reflections on the problem of relevance. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970.

SCHUTZ, A.; LUCKMAN, T. The structures of the life-world. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973.

SILVEIRA, J. R. C. Teoria da relevância: uma resposta pragmático-cognitiva à comunicação inferencial humana. Rio Grande do Sul: PUCRS/BCE, 1997.

SPERBER, D.; WILSON, D. Relevance: communication and cognition. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1995.

SPERBER, D.; WILSON, D. Teoria da relevância. Linguagem em (Dis)curso, Santa Catarina, v. 5, p. 221-268, 2005.

VAN RIJSBERGEN, C. J. Information retrieval. 2. ed. London: Butterworths, 1979.

VICKERY, B. C. Subject analysis for information retrieval. In: INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION, 2., 1959, Washington. Proceedings […]. Washington: National Academy of Sciences, 1959a. p. 855-866.

VICKERY, B. C. The structure of information retrieval systems. INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION, 2., 1959, Washington. Proceedings […]. Washington: National Academy of Sciences, 1959b. p. 1275-1290.

WHITE, H. D.; MC CAIN, K. W. Visualizing a discipline: an author cocitation analysis of information science 1972-1995. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, v. 49, n. 4, p. 327-355, 1998.

WHITE, H. D. Combining bibliometrics, information retrieval, and relevance theory: first examples of a synthesis. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology , v. 58, n. 4, p. 536-559, 2007a

WHITE, H. D. Combining bibliometrics, information retrieval, and relevance theory: some implications for information science. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, v. 58, v. 4, p. 583-605, 2007b.

WHITE, H. D. Relevance in theory. In: BATES, M. J.; MAACK, M. N. (Eds). Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences. 3. ed. New York: Taylor and Francis, 2010. p. 4498-4511.

WILSON, T. D. Human information behavior. Informing science: the international journal of an emerging transdiscipline (special issue on information science research), v. 3, n. 2, p. 49. 2000.

WILSON, D.; SPERBER, D. Relevance theory. In: WARD, G.; HORN, L. (eds.) Handbook of pragmatics. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. p. 607-632.

Published

2024-04-08

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

JANAITE NETO, Jorge; FERNEDA, Edberto. The concept of relevance in Information Retrieval. InCID: Revista de Ciência da Informação e Documentação, Ribeirão Preto, Brasil, v. 15, n. 1, p. e-206701, 2024. DOI: 10.11606/issn.2178-2075.incid.2024.206701. Disponível em: https://journals.usp.br/incid/article/view/206701.. Acesso em: 23 nov. 2024.