Term-weighting approaches in automatic text retrieval

• Published in: Information processing & management Vol. 24; no. 5; pp. 513 - 523
• Main Authors: Salton, Gerard, Buckley, Christopher
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 1988; Elsevier Science; Pergamon Press; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Automatic subject indexing; Content analysis; Exact sciences and technology; Indexing; Indexing. Classification. Abstracting. Syntheses; Information and communication sciences; Information and document structure and analysis; Information processing; Information processing and retrieval; Information retrieval; Information science. Documentation; Information storage and retrieval; Information work; Mathematical analysis; Sciences and techniques of general use; Specialized information sources; Subject indexing; Technical services; Term; Weighted; Weighting; Evaluation; Mathematical formula; Weighting; Indexing term; Automatic indexing; Uniterm; Information retrieval; Automated processing
• ISSN: 0306-4573; 1873-5371
• DOI: 10.1016/0306-4573(88)90021-0

The experimental evidence accumulated over the past 20 years indicates that text indexing systems based on the assignment of appropriately weighted single terms produce retrieval results that are superior to those obtainable with other more elaborate text representations. These results depend crucially on the choice of effective termweighting systems. This article summarizes the insights gained in automatic term weighting, and provides baseline single-term-indexing models with which other more elaborate content analysis procedures can be compared.