Tough mining: the challenges of searching the scientific literature

Abstract

With more than 400,000 new research articles listed each year in PubMed alone, more sophisticated tools are being developed to extract relevant information

Figure 1. Barely Getting below the Surface

The four levels of information retrieval: Google and MEDLINE both use keywords to direct a searcher to documents. But the next level has been tough to crack. Improved software would allow biologists to jump from the Web or MEDLINE to specifics with a single query. (Adapted with permission from the MITRE Corporation.)

Figure 2. The Impact of Challenge Evaluations (and Investment Dollars)

Driven by investment and competition as well as the pressure of regular challenge evaluations, error rates in speech recognition have dropped steadily, to the point where the technology has become standard from directory assistance to travel to financial information. Error rates drop by a factor of two every two years as challenge evaluations attract wide participation. (Graph adapted with permission from the MITRE Corporation.) Source: Pallett D, Garofolo J, Fiscus J (2000) Measurements in support of research accomplishments. Communications of the ACM: Special section on broadcast news understanding.