Journal of Documentation: Volume 53 Issue 1

Overview of the Okapi projects

S.E. Robertson

This paper gives a brief description of the Okapi projects and the work of the Centre for Interactive Systems research, as an introduction to this special issue of the Journal of…

Experiments on interfaces to support query expansion

M. Beaulieu

This paper focuses on the user and human‐computer interaction (HCI) aspects of the research based on the Okapi text retrieval system. Three experiments implementing different…

Laboratory experiments with Okapi: participation in the TREC programme

S.E. Robertson, S. Walker, M. Beaulieu

A brief review of the history of laboratory testing of information retrieval systems focuses on the idea of a general‐purpose test collection of documents, queries and relevance…

Transaction logging

S. Jones, SM. Gatford, T. Do, S. Walker

Transaction logging has been used extensively in Okapi‐related projects to allow search algorithms and user interfaces to be investigated, evaluated and compared. Logging software…

Research and evaluation in information retrieval

S.E. Robertson, M. Beaulieu

This paper is a discussion document, drawing on the experiences of the Okapi team as reported elsewhere in this issue. It is intended to raise some of the issues that are…

Peeling the onion: Okapi system architecture and software design issues

S. Jones, S. Walker, M. Gatford, T. Do

At the heart of the Okapi system is a formula referring to some half a dozen variables, which estimate the probability that a given document is relevant to a given query. User…

Designing language games in Okapi

Murat Karamuftuoglu

Study of information retrieval (IR) interaction from a viewpoint of an appropriate discipline of human communication, such as semiotics, should be useful. Application of semiotic…

Application of probabilistic methods to Chinese

Xiangji Huang, S.E. Robertson

The use of text retrieval methods based on the probabilistic model with Chinese language material is discussed. Since Chinese text has no natural word boundaries, we must either…

Context learning in Okapi

A. Göker

A user who makes repeated use of a retrieval system may be assumed to have a context which is common to successive uses (even if the immediate need differs). An IR system which…