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Article
Publication date: 15 June 2012

Andrea Barraza‐Urbina and Angela Carrillo Ramos

The purpose of this paper is to describe UWIRS (Ubiquitous Web Information Retrieval Solution), an agent‐based Web Information Retrieval (WIR) solution designed taking into…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to describe UWIRS (Ubiquitous Web Information Retrieval Solution), an agent‐based Web Information Retrieval (WIR) solution designed taking into account the unique features of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the limitations of existing WIR solutions for ubiquitous environments.

Design/methodology/approach

UWIRS can offer recommendation services by using the Multi‐Agent Vizier Recommendation Framework (Vizier). Vizier was designed under a generic approach and therefore can provide services to information retrieval applications so these may offer product recommendations that consider several adaptation/personalization dimensions (e.g. user dimension, context, among others).

Findings

Overall, the main challenge resides on: location, retrieval, integration and presentation of information from the WWW, quickly and accurately, to satisfy a user's singular information needs.

Originality/value

In UWIRS, agents cooperate in order to retrieve personalized information, considering user needs, goals, preferences and contextual features. UWIRS's agents are responsible for: interpreting user input and adding adaptation information by means of a query enrichment process; identifying and selecting the appropriate data sources taking into consideration the Profile Set (composed of User, Device and Information‐Provider Profiles); executing query routing and the information retrieval process; integrating and filtering the retrieved results; and lastly, coherent presentation of quality and relevant ubiquitous information (anytime, anywhere and anyhow) that satisfies the user's particular information needs and constraints associated to his/her access device.

Details

International Journal of Web Information Systems, vol. 8 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1744-0084

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 18 October 2018

Corinne Amel Zayani, Leila Ghorbel, Ikram Amous, Manel Mezghanni, André Péninou and Florence Sèdes

Generally, the user requires customized information reflecting his/her current needs and interests that are stored in his/her profile. There are many sources which may provide…

Abstract

Purpose

Generally, the user requires customized information reflecting his/her current needs and interests that are stored in his/her profile. There are many sources which may provide beneficial information to enrich the user’s interests such as his/her social network for recommendation purposes. The proposed approach rests basically on predicting the reliability of the users’ profiles which may contain conflictual interests. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Design/methodology/approach

This approach handles conflicts by detecting the reliability of neighbors’ profiles of a user. The authors consider that these profiles are dependent on one another as they may contain interests that are enriched from non-reliable profiles. The dependency relationship is determined between profiles, each of which contains interests that are structured based on k-means algorithm. This structure takes into consideration not only the evolutionary aspect of interests but also their semantic relationships.

Findings

The proposed approach was validated in a social-learning context as evaluations were conducted on learners who are members of Moodle e-learning system and Delicious social network. The quality of the created interest structure is assessed. Then, the result of the profile reliability is evaluated. The obtained results are satisfactory. These results could promote recommendation systems as the selection of interests that are considered of enrichment depends on the reliability of the profiles where they are stored.

Research limitations/implications

Some specific limitations are recorded. As the quality of the created interest structure would evolve in order to improve the profile reliability result. In addition, as Delicious is used as a main data source for the learner’s interest enrichment, it was necessary to obtain interests from other sources, such as e-recruitement systems.

Originality/value

This research is among the pioneer papers to combine the semantic as well as the hierarchical structure of interests and conflict resolution based on a profile reliability approach.

Details

Online Information Review, vol. 44 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1468-4527

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 28 September 2010

Veronica Maidel, Peretz Shoval, Bracha Shapira and Meirav Taieb‐Maimon

The purpose of this paper is to describe a new ontological content‐based filtering method for ranking the relevance of items for readers of news items, and its evaluation. The…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to describe a new ontological content‐based filtering method for ranking the relevance of items for readers of news items, and its evaluation. The method has been implemented in ePaper, a personalised electronic newspaper prototype system. The method utilises a hierarchical ontology of news; it considers common and related concepts appearing in a user's profile on the one hand, and in a news item's profile on the other hand, and measures the “hierarchical distances” between these concepts. On that basis it computes the similarity between item and user profiles and rank‐orders the news items according to their relevance to each user.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper evaluates the performance of the filtering method in an experimental setting. Each participant read news items obtained from an electronic newspaper and rated their relevance. Independently, the filtering method is applied to the same items and generated, for each participant, a list of news items ranked according to relevance.

Findings

The results of the evaluations revealed that the filtering algorithm, which takes into consideration hierarchically related concepts, yielded significantly better results than a filtering method that takes only common concepts into consideration. The paper determined a best set of values (weights) of the hierarchical similarity parameters. It also found out that the quality of filtering improves as the number of items used for implicit updates of the profile increases, and that even with implicitly updated profiles, it is better to start with user‐defined profiles.

Originality/value

The proposed content‐based filtering method can be used for filtering not only news items but items from any domain, and not only with a three‐level hierarchical ontology but any‐level ontology, in any language.

Details

Online Information Review, vol. 34 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1468-4527

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 18 July 2016

Dong Zhou, Séamus Lawless, Xuan Wu, Wenyu Zhao and Jianxun Liu

With an increase in the amount of multilingual content on the World Wide Web, users are often striving to access information provided in a language of which they are non-native…

1143

Abstract

Purpose

With an increase in the amount of multilingual content on the World Wide Web, users are often striving to access information provided in a language of which they are non-native speakers. The purpose of this paper is to present a comprehensive study of user profile representation techniques and investigate their use in personalized cross-language information retrieval (CLIR) systems through the means of personalized query expansion.

Design/methodology/approach

The user profiles consist of weighted terms computed by using frequency-based methods such as tf-idf and BM25, as well as various latent semantic models trained on monolingual documents and cross-lingual comparable documents. This paper also proposes an automatic evaluation method for comparing various user profile generation techniques and query expansion methods.

Findings

Experimental results suggest that latent semantic-weighted user profile representation techniques are superior to frequency-based methods, and are particularly suitable for users with a sufficient amount of historical data. The study also confirmed that user profiles represented by latent semantic models trained on a cross-lingual level gained better performance than the models trained on a monolingual level.

Originality/value

Previous studies on personalized information retrieval systems have primarily investigated user profiles and personalization strategies on a monolingual level. The effect of utilizing such monolingual profiles for personalized CLIR remains unclear. The current study fills the gap by a comprehensive study of user profile representation for personalized CLIR and a novel personalized CLIR evaluation methodology to ensure repeatable and controlled experiments can be conducted.

Details

Aslib Journal of Information Management, vol. 68 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2050-3806

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 27 July 2010

Hassan Naderi and Beatrice Rumpler

This paper aims to discuss and test the claim that utilization of the personalization techniques can be valuable to improve the efficiency of collaborative information retrieval…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to discuss and test the claim that utilization of the personalization techniques can be valuable to improve the efficiency of collaborative information retrieval (CIR) systems.

Design/methodology/approach

A new personalized CIR system, called PERCIRS, is presented based on the user profile similarity calculation (UPSC) formulas. To this aim, the paper proposes several UPSC formulas as well as two techniques to evaluate them. As the proposed CIR system is personalized, it could not be evaluated by Cranfield, like evaluation techniques (e.g. TREC). Hence, this paper proposes a new user‐centric mechanism, which enables PERCIRS to be evaluated. This mechanism is generic and can be used to evaluate any other personalized IR system.

Findings

The results show that among the proposed UPSC formulas in this paper, the (query‐document)‐graph based formula is the most effective. After integrating this formula into PERCIRS and comparing it with nine other IR systems, it is concluded that the results of the system are better than the other IR systems. In addition, the paper shows that the complexity of the system is less that the complexity of the other CIR systems.

Research limitations/implications

This system asks the users to explicitly rank the returned documents, while explicit ranking is still not widespread enough. However it believes that the users should actively participate in the IR process in order to aptly satisfy their needs to information.

Originality/value

The value of this paper lies in combining collaborative and personalized IR, as well as introducing a mechanism which enables the personalized IR system to be evaluated. The proposed evaluation mechanism is very valuable for developers of personalized IR systems. The paper also introduces some significant user profile similarity calculation formulas, and two techniques to evaluate them. These formulas can also be used to find the user's community in the social networks.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 66 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 20 June 2008

Claudio Teixeira, Joaquim Sousa Pinto and Joaquim Arnaldo Martins

The aim of this paper is to describe a project to provide an online web portal that can be used as a front‐end for all university users – students, teachers, staff – and services…

Abstract

Purpose

The aim of this paper is to describe a project to provide an online web portal that can be used as a front‐end for all university users – students, teachers, staff – and services, library, administration, e‐learning, and e‐mail.

Design/methodology/approach

The profile model proposed is mainly inheritable, defined by profile components with transactional templates, security rules and layout templates. This approach is being tested on a campus prototype portal. The prototype is an underway project in development at our university.

Findings

This paper explains that, even though different from the overall approaches, the basic profile and the profile management system proposed are solid alternatives when addressing personalization of organization users.

Originality/value

This new approach explains how user modelling applications can be integrated into any organization without the cost of reengineering the entire information system already in place.

Details

Campus-Wide Information Systems, vol. 25 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1065-0741

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 September 2005

Yuval Elovici, Chanan Glezer and Bracha Shapira

To propose a model of a privacy‐enhanced catalogue search system (PECSS) in an attempt to address privacy threats to consumers, who search for products and services on the world…

2399

Abstract

Purpose

To propose a model of a privacy‐enhanced catalogue search system (PECSS) in an attempt to address privacy threats to consumers, who search for products and services on the world wide web.

Design/methodology/approach

The model extends an agent‐based architecture for electronic catalogue mediation by supplementing it with a privacy enhancement mechanism. This mechanism introduces fake queries into the original stream of user queries, in an attempt to reduce the similarity between the actual interests of users (“internal user profile”) and the interests as observed by potential eavesdroppers on the web (“external user profile”). A prototype was constructed to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the model.

Findings

The evaluation of the model indicates that, by generating five fake queries per each original user query, the user's profile is hidden most effectively from any potential eavesdropper. Future research is needed to identify the optimal glossary of fake queries for various clients. The model also should be tested against various attacks perpetrated against the mixed stream of original and fake queries (i.e. statistical clustering).

Research limitations/implications

The model's feasibility was evaluated through a prototype. It was not empirically tested against various statistical methods used by intruders to reveal the original queries.

Practical implications

A useful architecture for electronic commerce providers, internet service providers (ISP) and individual clients who are concerned with their privacy and wish to minimize their dependencies on third‐party security providers.

Originality/value

The contribution of the PECSS model stems from the fact that, as the internet gradually transforms into a non‐free service, anonymous browsing cannot be employed any more to protect consumers' privacy, and therefore other approaches should be explored. Moreover, unlike other approaches, our model does not rely on the honesty of any third mediators and proxies that are also exposed to the interests of the client. In addition, the proposed model is scalable as it is installed on the user's computer.

Details

Internet Research, vol. 15 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1066-2243

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 November 2006

Yuval Elovici, Bracha Shapira and Adlay Meshiach

The purpose of this paper is to prove the ability of PRivAte Web (PRAW) – a system for private web browsing – to stand possible attacks.

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to prove the ability of PRivAte Web (PRAW) – a system for private web browsing – to stand possible attacks.

Design/methodology/approach

Attacks on the systems were simulated, manipulating systems variables. A privacy measure was defined to evaluate the capability of the systems to stand the attacks. Analysis of results was performed.

Findings

It was shown that, even if the attack is optimised to provide the attacker's highest utility, the similarity between the user profile and the approximated profile is pretty low and does not enable the eavesdropper to derive an accurate estimation of the user profile.

Research limitations/implications

One limitation is the “cold start” problem – in the current version, an observer might detect the first transaction, which is always a real user transaction. As a remedy for this problem, the first transaction will be randomly delayed and a random number of fake transactions played before the real one (according to Tr). Another limitation is that PRAW supports only link browsing, originated in search engine interactions (since it is the most common interaction on the web. It should be extended to include concealment of browsing to links originating in the “Favourites” list, that users tend to browse regularly (even a few times a day) for professional or personal reasons.

Practical implications

PRAW is feasible and preserves the privacy of web browsers. It is now undergoing commercialisation to become a shelf tool for privacy preservation.

Originality/value

The paper presents a practical statistical method for privacy preservation and proved that it is standing possible attacks. Methods usually proposed for this problem are not statistical, but cryptography oriented, and are too expensive in processing‐time to be practical.

Details

Online Information Review, vol. 30 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1468-4527

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 7 August 2009

Shihchieh Chou and Weiping Chang

The purpose of this paper is to identify distinguishing term characteristics from among the information of term appearance situations (tas) residing in the relevant/irrelevant…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to identify distinguishing term characteristics from among the information of term appearance situations (tas) residing in the relevant/irrelevant documents retrieved for use. Terms with specific characteristics could be used in the distinguishing of user profiles, documents, pages or concepts to assist in information retrieval.

Design/methodology/approach

First, a method to apply the potential term characteristics in the distinguishing of user profiles in the information retrieval environment is designed. Then, an information retrieval system is developed to demonstrate the realisation and sustain the study of the method. Formal tests are conducted to examine the distinguishing capability of the potential term characteristics proposed in the method.

Findings

The results of the tests show that the potential term characteristics proposed in this study are successfully applied in the distinguishing of user profiles in the information retrieval environment.

Originality/value

Identification of distinguishing term characteristics would expand the ground for the IR community in the design of feature‐extraction algorithms or systems that try to cull information from structured or unstructured documents.

Details

Online Information Review, vol. 33 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1468-4527

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 March 1992

Richard Poynder

This is the first of a series of articles about different host services' efforts to reach fresh users. The author has recently left the Marketing Department of British Telecom…

Abstract

This is the first of a series of articles about different host services' efforts to reach fresh users. The author has recently left the Marketing Department of British Telecom Business Information Services, which is responsible for promoting a portfolio of online databases via BT messaging services. The article places in context this year's launch of Freeway, an offline software package for assisting search of FT PROFILE.

Details

Online Review, vol. 16 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0309-314X

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