FlexIR: a Domain-Specific Information Retrieval System

We present a precise search engine adapted to professional environments which are characterized by a domain (e.g. medicine, law, sport, and so on). In our approach, each domain has its own terminology (i.e. a set of terms that denote its concepts: team, player, etc.) and it is organized along dimensions, such as person, location, etc. The dimensions, as described below, are made of concepts and semantic relationships that represent a particular perspective or point of view on the domain. We mainly use the notion of domain dimension to: i) precisely index document content, and ii) develop an interactive interface which allows the user to precisely describe his or her information need and therefore precisely access the document collection. Index Terms—Information retrieval, domain dimensions, user interface.