Do Topic Shift and Query Reformulation Patterns Correlate in Academic Search?

Conference paper
First Online:
Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNCS, volume 10193)

Abstract

While it is known that academic searchers differ from typical web searchers, little is known about the search behavior of academic searchers over longer periods of time. In this study we take a look at academic searchers through a large-scale log analysis on a major academic search engine. We focus on two aspects: query reformulation patterns and topic shifts in queries. We first analyze how each of these aspects evolve over time. We identify important query reformulation patterns: revisiting and issuing new queries tend to happen more often over time. We also find that there are two distinct types of users: one type of users becomes increasingly focused on the topics they search for as time goes by, and the other becomes increasingly diversifying. After analyzing these two aspects separately, we investigate whether, and to which degree, there is a correlation between topic shifts and query reformulations. Surprisingly, users’ preferences of query reformulations correlate little with their topic shift tendency. However, certain reformulations may help predict the magnitude of the topic shift that happens in the immediate next timespan. Our results shed light on academic searchers’ information seeking behavior and may benefit search personalization.

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Notes

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the China Scholarship Council and Elsevier. All content represents the opinion of the authors, which is not necessarily shared or endorsed by their respective employers and/or sponsors.

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Copyright information

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.University of AmsterdamAmsterdamThe Netherlands

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