Systems, methods, software, and interfaces for analyzing, mapping, and depicting search results in a topical space

摘要

The present inventor devised, among other things, information retrieval systems, methods, software, and related interfaces that help users assess and if necessary bolster the quality of their manual selections from search results. One exemplary system receives a set of documents selected from search results for an input query, identifies key subjects in the selected documents, and outputs a graphic, such as a pie chart, that shows not only how well these selected documents relate to the query, but also whether there are gaps in the topical scope of the selected documents related to the input query.

主权项

1. An information retrieval system comprising:
a server computer interfacing with a database; an access device interfacing with the server; a user interface module running on the server and configured to receive a query from the access device, query the database, and return a set of search results to the access device based on the received query; a user-operable selection feature integrated into the user interface module and configured to send a user-selected subset of the search results to the server; and a coverage analysis module interfacing with the server and the access device and configured to extract and analyze key subjects from documents in the database corresponding to the subset of search results; wherein the coverage analysis module is configured to display a topical map via the access device, the topical map showing the extent to which the documents cover the topic space defined by the query.