Examining the Application of Modular and Contextualised Ontology in Query Expansions for Information Retrieval

Abstract

This research considers the ongoing challenge of semantics-based search from the perspective of how to exploit Semantic Web languages for search in the current Web environment.

The purpose of the PhD was to use ontology-based query expansion (OQE) to improve search effectiveness by increasing search precision, i.e. retrieving relevant documents in the topmost ranked positions in a returned document list. Query experiments have required a novel search tool that can combine Semantic Web technologies in an otherwise traditional IR process using a Web document collection.