This just came through on the Summon list serv, regarding changes to the Summon relevancy ranking:
Next Tuesday, August 18, as part of our ongoing initiative to improve Summon’s relevance, we will be releasing an update to Summon’s relevance ranking algorithm — that is, only the ranking of search results will be affected; the number of search results returned for any given query will not be change. The new algorithm is expected to improve mainly the relevance of exploratory search cases, complementing the known item search improvements we released earlier this year.
We take a data-oriented approach to improving Summon’s relevance. In addition to collecting and analyzing relevance metrics, such as query and session abandonment rates, MRR (mean reciprocal rank), and DCG (discounted cumulative gain), we also maintain a large database of all relevance issues reported by our clients, users and internal team members. We analyze each issue and identify the factor(s) causing the issue. The relevance metrics and the relevance issue database play a key role in designing a new ranking algorithm or a feature for improving Summon’s relevance.
Two primary improvements in the new ranking algorithm are the following:
There are a number of other improvements we made in the new algorithm. One noteworthy property of the new algorithm is that short and general topical queries (e.g., linguistics, global warming) tend to return more books, eBooks, references and journals among the top results. And long and specific topical queries (e.g., linguistics universal grammar, global warming Kyoto protocol) tend to return more journal articles among the top results.
Here are a few examples that demonstrate the improvements. Please note that the search results depend on the content, so these examples may not apply to your instance of Summon.
dog law => The top results returned by the old algorithm are mostly items titled “Dog Law” and included very old journal and magazine articles. The top results returned by the new algorithm are more balanced, and include more recent titles than the original algorithm, such as “Dangerous dogs law updated” (Journal Article, 2007) and “Animal law and dog behavior” (Book, 1999).
autism aba therapy for young children => The top results returned by the old algorithm contained many books and other items titled just “Autism”. The top results returned by the new algorithm include longer titles, such as “A step-by-step ABA curriculum for young learners with autism spectrum disorders (age 3-10)” (eBook, 2013).
Prior to approving the improvements for release, we also do some qualitative analysis by enlisting the help of the Summon Advisory Board and other customers. These institutions provide qualitative feedback for the changes we propose. In that group, 80 percent of the feedback ranked the new algorithm as either “better” or “much better” than the current algorithm, with the remaining 20 percent ranking the quality as at least being comparable to our existing algorithm.
However, we know that improving relevance is an ongoing process, and that while this release will improve a number of use cases, there are more out there for us to address. If you would like to provide feedback, we have a new e-mail address for providing feedback and reporting relevance issues: summon.relevance.feedback@proquest.com.
We would appreciate it if you could follow the template below:
Please use “Relevance feedback from (your institution name)” in the subject line Please also include: Your name and e-mail address Query strings and other information, such as refinement and facet settings URLs of the problematic search cases (Also, please feel free to also attach screenshots.) Explanation of the issue
All reported search cases will be analyzed and added to our relevance issue database, and will be considered in our ongoing and future relevance improvement efforts. Please note that, in general, you will not receive a response for messages sent to this address. If you require a response, please report your issue via the usual customer support route.