Retrieval effectiveness by semantic and citation searching

A pilot study on the relative retrieval effectiveness of semantic relevance (by terms) and pragmatic relevance (by citations) is reported. A single database has been constructed to provide access by both descriptors and cited references. For each question from a set of queries, two equivalent sets were retrieved. All retrieved items were evaluated by subject experts for relevance to their originating queries. We conclude that there are essentially two types of relevance at work resulting in two different sets of documents. Using both search methods to create a union set is likely to increase recall. Those few retrieved by the intersection of the two methods tend to result in higher precision. Suggestions are made to develop a front-end system to display the overlapping items for higher precision and to manipulate and rank the union sets retrieved by the two search modes for improved output. © 1989 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.