[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jamist/v64y2013i7p1330-1344.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A random walk on an ontology: Using thesaurus structure for automatic subject indexing

Author

Listed:
  • Craig Willis
  • Robert M. Losee
Abstract
Relationships between terms and features are an essential component of thesauri, ontologies, and a range of controlled vocabularies. In this article, we describe ways to identify important concepts in documents using the relationships in a thesaurus or other vocabulary structures. We introduce a methodology for the analysis and modeling of the indexing process based on a weighted random walk algorithm. The primary goal of this research is the analysis of the contribution of thesaurus structure to the indexing process. The resulting models are evaluated in the context of automatic subject indexing using four collections of documents pre‐indexed with 4 different thesauri (AGROVOC [UN Food and Agriculture Organization], high‐energy physics taxonomy [HEP], National Agricultural Library Thesaurus [NALT], and medical subject headings [MeSH]). We also introduce a thesaurus‐centric matching algorithm intended to improve the quality of candidate concepts. In all cases, the weighted random walk improves automatic indexing performance over matching alone with an increase in average precision (AP) of 9% for HEP, 11% for MeSH, 35% for NALT, and 37% for AGROVOC. The results of the analysis support our hypothesis that subject indexing is in part a browsing process, and that using the vocabulary and its structure in a thesaurus contributes to the indexing process. The amount that the vocabulary structure contributes was found to differ among the 4 thesauri, possibly due to the vocabulary used in the corresponding thesauri and the structural relationships between the terms. Each of the thesauri and the manual indexing associated with it is characterized using the methods developed here.

Suggested Citation

  • Craig Willis & Robert M. Losee, 2013. "A random walk on an ontology: Using thesaurus structure for automatic subject indexing," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(7), pages 1330-1344, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:64:y:2013:i:7:p:1330-1344
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.22853
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.22853
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/asi.22853?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:64:y:2013:i:7:p:1330-1344. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.asis.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.