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Specificity is a relevance dimension that describes the extent to which a document part focuses on the topic of request. In the context of structured text (XML) retrieval, a document part corresponds to an XML element.
Specificity is defined as the length ratio, typically in number of characters, of contained relevant to irrelevant text in the document part. Different Specificity values can be associated to a document part. These values are drawn from the Specificity relevance scale, which has evolved from a discrete multi-graded relevance scale to a continuous relevance scale.
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The Initiative for the Evaluation of XML Retrieval (INEX) has defined Specificity as a relevance dimension that uses values from its own relevance scale to express the extent to which an XML element focuses on the topic of request. Since 2002, different names and relevance scales were used for Specificity at INEX. It initially evolved because the relevance dimension was...
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Kazai G, Masood S, Lalmas M. A study of the assessment of relevance for the INEX 2002 test collection. In: Proceedings of the 26th European Conference on IR Research; 2004. p. 296–310.
Pehcevski J, Thom JA. HiXEval: highlighting XML retrieval evaluation. In: Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop of the Initiative for the Evaluation of XML Retrieval; 2005. p. 43–57.
Trotman A. Wanted: element retrieval users. In: Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop of the Initiative for the Evaluation of XML Retrieval; 2005. p. 63–9.
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Pehcevski, J., Piwowarski, B. (2018). Specificity. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_365
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_365
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