Conceptual query formulation and retrieval

In this paper, we advance a technique to develop a user profile for information retrieval through knowledge acquisition techniques. The profile bridges the discrepancy between user-expressed keywords and system-recognizable index terms. The approach presented in this paper is based on the application of personal construct theory to determine a user's vocabulary and his/her view of different documents in a training set. The elicited knowledge is used to develop a model for each phrase/concept given by the user by employing machine learning techniques. Our model correlates the concepts in a user's vocabulary to the index terms present in the documents in the training set. Computation of dependence between the user phrases also contributes in the development of the user profile and in creating a classification of documents. The resulting system is capable of automatically identifying the user concepts and query translation to index terms computed by the conventional indexing process. The system is evaluated by using the standard measures of precision and recall by comparing its performance against the performance of the smart system for different queries.