=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1344/paper5
|storemode=property
|title=Extending Search Facilities via Bibliometric-Enhanced Stratagems
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1344/paper5.pdf
|volume=Vol-1344
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ecir/CarevicM15
}}
==Extending Search Facilities via Bibliometric-Enhanced Stratagems==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1344/paper5.pdf
Extending search facilities via
bibliometric-enhanced stratagems
Zeljko Carevic and Philipp Mayr
GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences
Unter Sachsenhausen 6-8
50667 Cologne, Germany
firstname.lastname@gesis.org
Abstract. The paper introduces simple bibliometric-enhanced search
facilities which are derived from the famous stratagems by Bates. Moves,
tactics and stratagems are revisited from a Digital Library perspective.
The potential of extended versions of ”journal run” or ”citation search”
for interactive information retrieval is outlined. The authors elaborate on
the future implementation and evaluation of new bibliometric-enhanced
search services.
1 Introduction
In information retrieval a change away from a mainly system-oriented perspec-
tive towards a more user-oriented perspective can be observed [7]. A main chal-
lenge is to gain insights into the way users perform searches in state-of-the-art
Digital Libraries (DLs). During the past numerous models have been proposed
that aim at modelling the information searching and seeking behaviour, e.g. the
information seeking behaviour model proposed by Bates. According to Bates [1]
search activities can be separated into four categories: moves, tactics, stratagems
and strategies. A move is a simple search activity like entering a query term or
selecting a specific document. Tactics are a combination of many moves like the
selection of a broader search term or breaking complex search queries into sub-
problems. Bates defines a stratagem as follows: ”a stratagem is a complex of a
number of moves and/or tactics, and generally involves both a particular identi-
fied information search domain anticipated to be productive by the searcher, and
a mode of tackling the particular file organization of that domain.” A stratagem
could be for instance a ”journal run” or a ”citation search”. Finally, a strategy
is a combination of moves, tactics and stratagems that satisfies an information
need like for instance searching for related work in a specific research area. It is
difficult to implement strategic support in an information system as strategies
involve numerous moves, tactics and stratagems as well as experience gathered
in the entire search process. Although some work has been invested in develop-
ing strategic support [4] for our position paper we focus on moves, tactics and
stratagems. In state-of-the-art DLs moves and tactics are widely supported. For
our real life example, the DL sowiport1 , users are enabled to enter search terms
1
sowiport.gesis.org
selected from a search term recommender and to select broader or narrower
terms from a thesaurus etc. [6]. Support for advanced search activities on the
stratagem or strategy level does not exist. Though the ”systems file organiza-
tion” covers information needed for stratagem support like for instance journal
and citation data, we are missing predefined stratagems on the search interface
(see Section 3). Users therefore need to perform search stratagems manually.
This requires deep knowledge of the information structure and the formulation
of complex queries [3]. This may be adequate for expert or power users but can
hardly be accomplished by novices. We think that stratagems are an essential
part of complex search tasks that need to be supported on the user interface.
We believe that DLs like sowiport can largely benefit from predefined stratagems
like footnote chasing, journal runs and citation search (see Section 4).
2 Related work
The following related work section brings together some papers which have been
identified as key ideas of the approach outlined later in this paper.
First of all we want to mention the concepts developed by Bates [1, 2] which
received a lot of attention in information and computer science. Her concepts
describe the mechanisms of search activities and tasks in a very generalized way,
as an information seeking model. These concepts of specific search tactics in an
evolving search have been implemented in an academic Web environment by Fuhr
et al. [5, 4], in the project Daffodil. Today many other state-of-the-art DLs like
Web of Science or PubMed support the search tactics outlined in Bates. Another
important aspect is the ongoing popularity of the cognitive approach in IR and
the inclusion of different forms of context and interaction (e.g. in Interactive
IR) which has been combined by Ingwersen and Järvelin [7]. As a consequence
of their framework the authors postulate a shift away from laboratory IR with
controlled settings and without direct user engagement towards a holistic user-
oriented perspective on the search process.
Bibliometric techniques are not yet widely applied to enhance the retrieval
processes in DLs, although they offer value-added effects for users [10, 9]. The
objective of the IRM project2 was to introduce and evaluate bibliometric value-
added services for information retrieval within a heterogeneous DL environment.
The authors [10] have investigated the use of informetrics as a ranking feature in
a retrieval system. They found that using informetrics can improve the retrieval
quality. Though the results are promising this has only been evaluated using
the classic Cranfield setting. Although a prototype3 has been implemented that
supports predefined bibliometric stratagems the larger scenario with real users
and interactions has never been evaluated.
2
http://www.gesis.org/en/research/external-funding-projects/archive/irm/
3
http://multiweb.gesis.org/irsa/IRMPrototype
3 Motivation
In the following we develop two basic positions which try to support the ap-
proach outlined in section 4. Position A aims at the missing support for prede-
fined stratagems on the user interface. In position B we briefly explain context-
preserving and context free moves and how these could be supported in infor-
mation systems.
Position A: Missing predefined stratagem support on the user inter-
face
Like most DLs sowiport supports basic search features like facets, filtering, dif-
ferent types of ranking etc. When comparing the available features with Bates’s
search activities it can be seen that all these functions belong to moves and tac-
tics. Domain specific search activities that could be considered as a stratagem are
not supported on the interface. Thus, they need to be composed and executed
manually by the user. This requires knowledge of the domain and the underly-
ing data structure. In DLs for example users need to be aware that papers are
often published in journals or that co-cited documents are often related to each
other. One problem with stratagems is that they are only used by experts that
have experience in the given domain. A novice searcher may not be aware of cer-
tain stratagems which may result in limiting his/her search activities to moves
and tactics. We think that stratagems are an essential part of complex search
tasks that need to be supported. For this purpose we define a set of predefined
stratagems that we consider useful for each level of experience (see section 4).
Open Question: Which stratagems can be supported?
Position B: Supporting context-preserving and context free moves
When browsing DLs we can distinguish between a) context-preserving and b)
context free moves. A context is defined e.g. by a query or filter criteria. In
context-preserved browsing the context remains and is transferred into the next
move. One example for a context-preserved move is faceted browsing. A user
enters a search term and is then provided with a ranked result set. He/She could
now reduce the result set by selecting a facet item. In this case, both the initial
query (context) and the facet item are combined to a new query. Browsing with-
out context (b) is typically a simple move that performs a certain action in a
retrieval system without transferring the context into the next step. An example
of a context-free move may be the selection of an author appearing in the result
set. This results in a new query where the retrieval system performs a new search
looking for the selected author name. We believe that both context-preserving
and context free moves should be supported by the system. A system should
offer both functions to the user and let him/her decide based on the current
task what is best for him/her. Users should be able to decide whether they want
to perform a context free or a context-preserved move.
Open Question: How can context-preserving and context free moves be sup-
ported on the interface? How can these functions be arranged for the user?
4 Bibliometric-enhanced stratagems
Bibliometric-enhanced stratagems aim at facilitating domain specific search ac-
tivities by applying bibliometric measures for re-ranking and/or rearranging DL-
entities like documents, journals or authors. Stratagems as described in the pre-
vious section can be implemented in various ways. A journal run for example
can be implemented in the most simple way by offering a list of issues ranked by
the publication date. We think that the implementation of stratagems depends
on the current task thus, making it necessary to offer various ways of perform-
ing a stratagem search. To this end we describe a preliminary approach for
novel bibliometric-enhanced search facilities as an extension to basic stratagem
support. In the following we discuss two implementations for stratagem sup-
port in a DL like sowiport: an extended journal run and an extended citation
search. Both examples are described using a mockup showing how to implement
bibliometric-enhanced search facilities and how to deal with context free and
context-preserving stratagems and moves.
4.1 Journal run
A journal can be considered as a single specialized source for finding relevant doc-
uments from a manageable number of potential documents. On the other hand
the focus on one journal results in the exclusion of other journals that might
contain relevant documents. One way to overcome this issue is to offer different
modes of a journal run on the user interface. For this section two stratagems are
Fig. 1. Journal Stratagem
described (other modes are possible as well).
1) Extended journal run: starting from a ranked result set (see Figure 1) the user
can perform an extended journal run that rearranges the articles based on the
journal they were published in (see Figure 2). It can be seen that an extended
journal run changes the ranking from a document-based to a journal-based rank-
ing. This journal-based ranking in our example is organized according to the im-
pact factor measure of the journal. Using the impact factor is only one possible
way of applying bibliometric journal metrics to re-rank the results. Other pos-
sible journal metrics are for example: h-index, g-index, etc. Each journal shows
at least all documents that were available in the previous step. The list of doc-
uments can be expanded to all documents that are available for the particular
journal by selecting ”More from journal X”.
2) Context-preserving journal run: A context-preserving journal run is performed
by selecting the name of a journal from a document appearing in the result set
(see Figure 1). In this example the previous moves and tactics that were per-
formed before the journal run form the context of the stratagem. A context can
be for instance a combination of the query term, a filter criterion and a single
document attribute. Instead of ranking the documents in that journal by issue or
by date we perform a ranking that is based on the context. Doing so we create
a ranking that is orientated on the current search task. In comparison to the
extended journal run this stratagem is limited to one journal.
Fig. 2. Extended journal run
4.2 Citation analysis
Another example for a bibliometric-enhanced stratagem is displayed in Figure
3. In this example the user performs a citation search. We define a context menu
from which the user can select different citation analysis modes. For this example
three modes are proposed.
1) A simple citation overview where the user can see a list of documents that
cite the seed document. This is a simple move that performs a new search using
Fig. 3. Citation Stratagem
the seed document as a query term looking for citations.
2) The second mode allows the user to rank the citations based on bibliographic
coupling [8]. Bibliographic coupling aims at finding related documents under the
assumption that scientific papers are related to each other when they have one
or more references in common. We now rank the citing documents based on
the similarity in their reference lists. This way we expect documents that are
strongly related to be ranked at the top of the list.
3) The third mode is a context-preserving list of citations ranked by their relat-
edness to the seed. There are numerous methods of measuring the relatedness of
the seed to the citing documents. The relatedness could for example be measured
by comparing titles or by looking for keyword overlaps between the seed and the
citing documents. This way citing documents that are related to the seed are
ranked at the top of the list.
5 Open Questions
In this position paper we have described a preliminary approach for two novel
bibliometric-enhanced search facilities as an extension to basic stratagem sup-
port. We strongly believe that bibliometric-enhanced search facilities can be a
substantial part of DLs. Crucial points are: the choice of stratagems that could
be supported and how these stratagems can be arranged on the interface. Fur-
thermore, we need to investigate which bibliometric metrics can be integrated.
One of the main challenges will be the evaluation of the stratagems. Our ideas for
an evaluation go into two directions. We suggest a log-file based evaluation and a
user evaluation. In the former we will measure the acceptance of the stratagems
based on different indicators like session duration and positiv follow-up search
activities (e.g. bookmarking or printing a document). Additionally, we will cre-
ate different A/B tests where a number of users are given some of the predefined
stratagems instead of the current implementation. For our user evaluation we
plan to conduct several user studies with experts. This way we want to gain
an insight into which features could be helpful and which stratagems a system
should support.
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