Peter Mutschke

Daniel Hienert, Peter Mutschke

The usefulness evaluation model proposed by Cole et al. in 2009 [2] focuses on the evaluation of interactive IR systems by their support towards the user's overall goal, sub goals and tasks. This is a more human focus of the IR evaluation process than with classical TREC-oriented studies and gives a more holistic view on the IR evaluation process. However, yet there is no formal framework how the usefulness model can be operationalized. Additionally, a lot of information needed for the operationalization is only available in explicit user studies where for example the overall goal and the tasks are prompted from the users or are predefined. Measuring the usefulness of IR systems outside the laboratory is a challenging task as most often only log data of user interaction is available. But, an operationalization of the usefulness model based on interaction data could be applied to diverse systems and evaluation results would be comparable. In this article we discuss the challenges for measuring the usefulness of IIR systems with log-based approaches.

Daniel Hienert, Peter Mutschke

In Interactive Information Retrieval (IIR) different services such as search term suggestion can support users in their search process. The applicability and performance of such services is either measured with different user-centered studies (like usability tests or laboratory experiments) or, in the context of IR, with their contribution to measures like precision and recall. However, each evaluation methodology has its certain disadvantages. For example, user-centered experiments are often costly and small-scaled; IR experiments rely on relevance assessments and measure only relevance of documents. In this work we operationalize the usefulness model of Cole et al. (2009) on the level of system support to measure not only the local effect of an IR service, but the impact it has on the whole search process. We therefore use a log-based evaluation approach which models user interactions within sessions with positive signals and apply it for the case of a search term suggestion service. We found that the usage of the service significantly often implicates the occurrence of positive signals during the following session steps.

Peter Mutschke, Karima Haddou ou Moussa

The ability to browse an information space in a structured way by exploiting similarities and dissimilarities between information objects is crucial for knowledge discovery. Knowledge maps use visualizations to gain insights into the structure of large-scale information spaces, but are still far away from being applicable for searching. The paper proposes a use case for enhancing search term recommendations by heat map visualizations of co-word relation-ships taken from indexing vocabulary. By contrasting areas of different "heat" the user is enabled to indicate mainstream areas of the field in question more easily.

Peter Mutschke, Philipp Mayr, Andrea Scharnhorst

Knowledge maps are promising tools for visualizing the structure of large-scale information spaces, but still far away from being applicable for searching. The first international workshop on "Knowledge Maps and Information Retrieval (KMIR)", held as part of the International Conference on Digital Libraries 2014 in London, aimed at bringing together experts in Information Retrieval (IR) and knowledge mapping in order to discuss the potential of interactive knowledge maps for information seeking purposes.

Philipp Mayr, Ingo Frommholz, Andrea Scharnhorst et al.

This workshop brings together experts of communities which often have been perceived as different once: bibliometrics / scientometrics / informetrics on the one side and information retrieval on the other. Our motivation as organizers of the workshop started from the observation that main discourses in both fields are different, that communities are only partly overlapping and from the belief that a knowledge transfer would be profitable for both sides. Bibliometric techniques are not yet widely used to enhance retrieval processes in digital libraries, although they offer value-added effects for users. On the other side, more and more information professionals, working in libraries and archives are confronted with applying bibliometric techniques in their services. This way knowledge exchange becomes more urgent. The first workshop set the research agenda, by introducing in each other methods, reporting about current research problems and brainstorming about common interests. This follow-up workshop continues the overall communication, but also puts one problem into the focus. In particular, we will explore how statistical modelling of scholarship can improve retrieval services for specific communities, as well as for large, cross-domain collections like Mendeley or ResearchGate. This second BIR workshop continues to raise awareness of the missing link between Information Retrieval (IR) and bibliometrics and contributes to create a common ground for the incorporation of bibliometric-enhanced services into retrieval at the scholarly search engine interface.

Dagmar Kern, Peter Mutschke, Philipp Mayr

We propose an online access panel to support the evaluation process of Interactive Information Retrieval (IIR) systems - called IIRpanel. By maintaining an online access panel with users of IIR systems we assume that the recurring effort to recruit participants for web-based as well as for lab studies can be minimized. We target on using the online access panel not only for our own development processes but to open it for other interested researchers in the field of IIR. In this paper we present the concept of IIRpanel as well as first implementation details.

Peter Mutschke, Andrea Scharnhorst, Christophe Guéret et al.

Information systems usually show as a particular point of failure the vagueness between user search terms and the knowledge orders of the information space in question. Some kind of guided searching therefore becomes more and more important in order to precisely discover information without knowing the right search terms. Knowledge maps of digital library collections are promising navigation tools through knowledge spaces but still far away from being applicable for searching digital libraries. However, there is no continuous knowledge exchange between the "map makers" on the one hand and the Information Retrieval (IR) specialists on the other hand. Thus, there is also a lack of models that properly combine insights of the two strands. The proposed workshop aims at bringing together these two communities: experts in IR reflecting on visual enhanced search interfaces and experts in knowledge mapping reflecting on visualizations of the content of a collection that might also present a context for a search term in a visual manner. The intention of the workshop is to raise awareness of the potential of interactive knowledge maps for information seeking purposes and to create a common ground for experiments aiming at the incorporation of knowledge maps into IR models at the level of the user interface.

Philipp Mayr, Philipp Schaer, Andrea Scharnhorst et al.

This first "Bibliometric-enhanced Information Retrieval" (BIR 2014) workshop aims to engage with the IR community about possible links to bibliometrics and scholarly communication. Bibliometric techniques are not yet widely used to enhance retrieval processes in digital libraries, although they offer value-added effects for users. In this workshop we will explore how statistical modelling of scholarship, such as Bradfordizing or network analysis of co-authorship network, can improve retrieval services for specific communities, as well as for large, cross-domain collections. This workshop aims to raise awareness of the missing link between information retrieval (IR) and bibliometrics / scientometrics and to create a common ground for the incorporation of bibliometric-enhanced services into retrieval at the digital library interface. Our interests include information retrieval, information seeking, science modelling, network analysis, and digital libraries. The goal is to apply insights from bibliometrics, scientometrics, and informetrics to concrete practical problems of information retrieval and browsing.

Philipp Mayr, Andrea Scharnhorst, Birger Larsen et al.

Bibliometric techniques are not yet widely used to enhance retrieval processes in digital libraries, although they offer value-added effects for users. In this workshop we will explore how statistical modelling of scholarship, such as Bradfordizing or network analysis of coauthorship network, can improve retrieval services for specific communities, as well as for large, cross-domain collections. This workshop aims to raise awareness of the missing link between information retrieval (IR) and bibliometrics/scientometrics and to create a common ground for the incorporation of bibliometric-enhanced services into retrieval at the digital library interface.

Peter Mutschke, Mark Thamm

Online Social Networks usually provide no or limited way to access scholarly information provided by Digital Libraries (DLs) in order to share and discuss scholarly content with other online community members. The paper addresses the potentials of Social Networking sites (SNSs) for science and proposes initial use cases as well as a basic bi-directional model called ScholarLib for linking SNSs to scholarly DLs. The major aim of ScholarLib is to make scholarly information provided by DLs accessible at SNSs, and vice versa, to enhance retrieval quality at DL side by social information provided by SNSs.