Peter Ingwersen

The User in Interactive Information Retrieval Evaluation

This chapter initially defines what characterizes and distinguishes research frameworks from research models. The Laboratory Research Framework for IR illustrates the case. We define briefly what is meant by the concept of research design, including research questions, and what this chapter regards as central IIR evaluation research settings and variables. This is followed by a description of IIR components, pointing to the elements of the Integrated Cognitive Research Framework for IR that incorporates the Laboratory Framework in a contextual manner. The following sections describe and exemplify: (1) Request types, test persons, task-based simulations of search situations and relevance or performance measures in IIR; (2) Ultra-Light Interactive IR experiments; (3) Interactive-Light IR studies; and (4) Naturalistic field investigations of IIR. The chapter concludes with a summary section, a reference list and a thematically classified bibliography.

Cognitive Overlaps along the Polyrepresentation Continuum

The principle of polyrepresentation is a coherent and comprehensive cognitive framework that can be applied simultaneously to the cognitive space of the user and the information space of IR systems. The principle has the potential to guide the design of interactive IR systems that take full advantage of the available document representations and user’s context to improve retrieval performance.

An exploratory study into perceived task complexity, topic specificity and usefulness for integrated search

We investigate the relations between user perceptions of work task complexity, topic specificity, and usefulness of retrieved results. 23 academic researchers submitted detailed descriptions of 65 real-life work tasks in the physics domain, and assessed documents retrieved from an integrated collection consisting of full text research articles in PDF, abstracts, and bibliographic records [6]. Bibliographic records were found to be more precise than full text PDFs, regardless of task complexity and topic specificity. PDFs were found to be more useful. Overall, for higher task complexity and topic specificity bibliographic records demonstrated much higher precision than did PDFs on a four-graded usefulness scale.

Panel: Perspectives on Adaptivity in Information Retrieval Interaction (PAIRI)

Adaptivity in IR interactions requires the IR systems adapting to users’ situations and the users adapting to the systems. System adaption entails dynamic user modeling, effective information architecture and enhanced search features such as search integration and relevance feedback; user adaptation through interactions entails mental model building and modification towards a coherent state of knowledge and learning. The panel is structured as follows. Initially we provide an overview of the panel contents, consisting of four central dimensions of adaptivity in IR interaction. These are adaption 1) through integration of information objects; 2) of information system to searcher; 3) of searcher to information system; and 4) to context and practice. The sequence follows the order of the panellists, i.e., each panellist is the prime mover of a particular dimension.

The 13th International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics

The 13th International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics took place in Durban, South Africa from 4 to 7 July 2011 (Ocholla and Ingwersen 2011). The meeting was organised under the auspices of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (ISSI) and by the ISSI 2011 Conference Local Organising Committee with the participation of six Universities and Research Centres in South Africa, particularly, the Durban University of Technology, the University of Cape Town, the University of KwaZulu Natal, the National Research Foundation, the University of South Africa, the University of Pretoria and the University of Zululand. The event was hosted by the University of Zululand and Durban University of Technology. This was the first time that the conference was held in Africa. The previous 12 conferences in this series of biannual International Conferences on Scientometrics and Informetrics had been held in Belgium (1987), Canada (1989), India (1991), Germany (1993), USA (1995), Israel (1997), Mexico (1999), Australia (2001), China (2003), Sweden (2005), Spain (2007) and Brazil (2009). The conference attracted about 200 participants from 32 countries. At the conference, 93 oral presentations (65 full papers and 28 research in progress papers), together with 52