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The efficiency of medlars titles for retrieval

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  • William L. Miller

Abstract

Previous research has indicated that the titles rather than index terms would, in the standard MEDLARS system, give lower Recall but higher Precision. A title searching technique is described which allows the number of references retrieved to be fixed before a search commences. With this technique the greater applicability of title‐terms offsets their relative paucity. The title‐searching technique is tested using queries put to MEDLARS. These queries were not specially solicited for the test. Title searching is compared with the standard MEDLARS index term search and with an index term search with fixed output size. For equal output sizes, Title searching retrieves 4 relevant references for every 5 retrieved by index term searching. Thus the relative retrieval efficiency of Titles and Index terms is so close that the choice of one method or the other must be primarily on economic grounds.

Suggested Citation

  • William L. Miller, 1971. "The efficiency of medlars titles for retrieval," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 22(5), pages 318-321, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamest:v:22:y:1971:i:5:p:318-321
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.4630220504
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