Building the basis for evidence-based library and information practice: a qualitative study. This project will help Australia's libraries to contribute in a more powerful way to national productivity. It will establish an empirical basis for evidence-based library and information practice that will help library and information professionals make tough decisions in an environment where there is competition for limited resources.
Methodologies for Designing and Evaluating Information Retrieval Experiments. Australian researchers have been highly successful in the area of information searching for more than two decades. This project will reinforce that position. By developing better measures of how retrieval systems such as web search engines perform, we will be able to advise the providers of such services on how to structure software so as to maximize the utility gained by their customers. Targeted access to the right ....Methodologies for Designing and Evaluating Information Retrieval Experiments. Australian researchers have been highly successful in the area of information searching for more than two decades. This project will reinforce that position. By developing better measures of how retrieval systems such as web search engines perform, we will be able to advise the providers of such services on how to structure software so as to maximize the utility gained by their customers. Targeted access to the right information is a goal of all organizations, regardless of their type, and improved methodologies for conducting information retrieval experiments will have widespread and tangible benefits. The techniques developed will also be applicable in fields such as document categorization, text summarization, and machine learning.Read moreRead less
Static and Dynamic Query Pruning Techniques for Complex Text Retrieval Systems. Targeted access to the right information is a goal of all organizations, regardless of their type, and improved methodologies for implementing information retrieval systems have widespread and tangible benefits. Australian researchers have been highly successful in this area of information searching for more than two decades, and this project will reinforce that position. By developing techniques for providing fast ....Static and Dynamic Query Pruning Techniques for Complex Text Retrieval Systems. Targeted access to the right information is a goal of all organizations, regardless of their type, and improved methodologies for implementing information retrieval systems have widespread and tangible benefits. Australian researchers have been highly successful in this area of information searching for more than two decades, and this project will reinforce that position. By developing techniques for providing faster search, even in the presence of complex query variants and distributed implementations, we will be able to advise the suppliers of such services on how to provide a maximally useful product.
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The Quantum Mechanics of Semantic Space. Quantum mechanics (QM) is a well known and successful theory from physics which has recently attracted quite some public interest. Quantum Mechanics is emerging out of physics and permeating into other areas, for example, information retrieval, human language and cognition. This offers tantalizing possibilities and bizarre implications, some of which, if realized, can lead to genuine breakthroughs in producing information technology to enhance human aware ....The Quantum Mechanics of Semantic Space. Quantum mechanics (QM) is a well known and successful theory from physics which has recently attracted quite some public interest. Quantum Mechanics is emerging out of physics and permeating into other areas, for example, information retrieval, human language and cognition. This offers tantalizing possibilities and bizarre implications, some of which, if realized, can lead to genuine breakthroughs in producing information technology to enhance human awareness in increasingly complex information environments. Through this project, Australia has the possibility to be at the forefront and have a hand in determining such developments.Read moreRead less
Effective Information Retrieval for Partitioned Document Collections. Current information retrieval services make use of massive indexes in order to resolve content-based queries. Monolithic approaches like this have been effective until now because the volume of data stored has been manageable on a single machine or tightly-coupled cluster of machines, and because the data has been available for collection. But with an increasing amount of automatically generated data, and an increasing diversi ....Effective Information Retrieval for Partitioned Document Collections. Current information retrieval services make use of massive indexes in order to resolve content-based queries. Monolithic approaches like this have been effective until now because the volume of data stored has been manageable on a single machine or tightly-coupled cluster of machines, and because the data has been available for collection. But with an increasing amount of automatically generated data, and an increasing diversity of information sources, other approaches are required. In this project we will investigate mechanisms for handling retrieval tasks when the indexes to the data are stored locally with the data, and when no central index is viable.Read moreRead less
Concept learning and Structure Formation for Document Navigation. This proposal is motivated by its interest in document retrieval and
discovery using formal concept analysis. The hypothesis to be tested
is that logical structures can be automatically inferred from
a document collection using information inference and
concept learning.
Real-time rights-based recordkeeping governance. This interdisciplinary research project aims to explore how records co-creation can be conceptualised in child protection and information law and overseen dynamically through a new digitally enabled, child-centred and rights-based advocacy and regulatory framework, to play an integral role in ensuring that the systems to protect children from abuse and neglect do not themselves cause harm. This project seeks to develop participatory information go ....Real-time rights-based recordkeeping governance. This interdisciplinary research project aims to explore how records co-creation can be conceptualised in child protection and information law and overseen dynamically through a new digitally enabled, child-centred and rights-based advocacy and regulatory framework, to play an integral role in ensuring that the systems to protect children from abuse and neglect do not themselves cause harm. This project seeks to develop participatory information governance as a new theoretical foundation for proactive recordkeeping and rights advocacy for childhood out-of-home Care. Improved transparency, accountability, efficiency and access to justice are anticipated benefits from this legal, recordkeeping and information infrastructure design research.Read moreRead less
AI-driven Effective Query Formulation for Better Systematic Reviews. This project aims to develop novel AI-based search engine methods to make the creation of systematic reviews cheaper, faster and unbiased. Systematic reviews are the cornerstone for evidence-based decisions in clinical practice and government policy making. Given the pace new research is published at, it is unsustainable to manually conduct systematic reviews in the traditional manner, taking on average 2 years and $350K and be ....AI-driven Effective Query Formulation for Better Systematic Reviews. This project aims to develop novel AI-based search engine methods to make the creation of systematic reviews cheaper, faster and unbiased. Systematic reviews are the cornerstone for evidence-based decisions in clinical practice and government policy making. Given the pace new research is published at, it is unsustainable to manually conduct systematic reviews in the traditional manner, taking on average 2 years and $350K and becoming already outdated when published. The outcomes of this project will lead to systematic reviews of higher quality, while reducing their financial and temporal costs, providing significant benefits to organisations performing reviews and their funders, and to people impacted by decisions made from the reviews.Read moreRead less
Improving Interactions for Digital Browsing of Large Collections. Browsing for information is an established and fundamental part of how people find the knowledge that they need. However, our current understanding of how browsing succeeds or fails is poor. This is because we have limited empirical data, and until recently, the available technologies to create detailed data on what people actually look at and when were very limited. As a result, digital browsing methods have been almost universal ....Improving Interactions for Digital Browsing of Large Collections. Browsing for information is an established and fundamental part of how people find the knowledge that they need. However, our current understanding of how browsing succeeds or fails is poor. This is because we have limited empirical data, and until recently, the available technologies to create detailed data on what people actually look at and when were very limited. As a result, digital browsing methods have been almost universally inferior to real-world counterparts. Given the lack of fundamental theories to inform design, this is unsurprising. After creating a detailed and systematic account of user behaviour in browsing, we will create novel designs that will accelerate the discovery of information, particularly for innovative work.Read moreRead less
Finding answers for complex questions. This project aims to develop a new search paradigm for on-line search engines that presents users with answers to complex questions, rather than forcing them to find answers themselves from lists of retrieved documents. The project will develop a taxonomy of complex answer search tasks, devise novel techniques to increase the effectiveness of complex answer retrieval through interaction and, create a new evaluation framework for precise measurement of syste ....Finding answers for complex questions. This project aims to develop a new search paradigm for on-line search engines that presents users with answers to complex questions, rather than forcing them to find answers themselves from lists of retrieved documents. The project will develop a taxonomy of complex answer search tasks, devise novel techniques to increase the effectiveness of complex answer retrieval through interaction and, create a new evaluation framework for precise measurement of system effectiveness. This project should provide significant advances that will benefit all users of search engines.Read moreRead less