Local and global query expansion for hierarchical complex topics

Dalton, J. , Naseri, S., Dietz, L. and Allan, J. (2019) Local and global query expansion for hierarchical complex topics. In: Azzopardi, L., Stein, B., Fuhr, N., Mayr, P., Hauff, C. and Hiemstra, D. (eds.) Advances in Information Retrieval: 41st European Conference on IR Research, ECIR 2019, Cologne, Germany, April 14–18, 2019. Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (11437). Springer, pp. 290-303. ISBN 9783030157111 (doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-15712-8_19)

Abstract

In this work we study local and global methods for query expansion for multifaceted complex topics. We study word-based and entity-based expansion methods and extend these approaches to complex topics using fine-grained expansion on different elements of the hierarchical query structure. For a source of hierarchical complex topics we use the TREC Complex Answer Retrieval (CAR) benchmark data collection. We find that leveraging the hierarchical topic structure is needed for both local and global expansion methods to be effective. Further, the results demonstrate that entity-based expansion methods show significant gains over word-based models alone, with local feedback providing the largest improvement. The results on the CAR paragraph retrieval task demonstrate that expansion models that incorporate both the hierarchical query structure and entity-based expansion result in a greater than 20% improvement over word-based expansion approaches.

• Item Type: Book Sections
• Additional Information: This work was supported in part by the Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval and in part by NSF grant #IIS-1617408.
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Dalton, Dr Jeff and Naseri, Shahrzad
• Authors: Dalton, J., Naseri, S., Dietz, L., and Allan, J.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering; College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
• Publisher: Springer
• ISBN: 9783030157111
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
• First Published: First published in Proceedings of the 41st European Conference on IR Research, ECIR 2019, Cologne, Germany, April 14–18, 2019, Part I, 290-303
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher