The use of relation matching in information retrieval

Abstract

Most information retrieval systems use keyword-matching to identify documents that may be relevant to the user’s query. The user’s query may contain multiple concepts linked together with relations. However, keyword matching methods ignore relations that are expressed in the query. This paper discusses the use of relation matching in information retrieval – matching terms and relations between terms expressed in the query with terms and relations found in the documents. Previous studies on relation matching are surveyed, and related issues and problems are discussed. The results of research carried out as part of the author’s dissertation are reported and current research efforts are outlined.