Bradfordizing als Re-Ranking-Ansatz in Literaturinformationssystemen

Abstract

This article proposes a re-ranking approach for search systems which intents to improve the retrieval for scientific literature on a significant level. The non text-oriented ranking approach Bradfordizing will be introduced and then the effectiveness for typical subject specific retrieval topics will be evaluated. The underlying Bradford Law of Scattering (BLS) states that the literature on any subject or domain is distributed in different zones with typical concentrations in each zone. The core zone or core with a high concentration of literature is followed by zones with decreasing and low concentrations of papers. Bradfordizing sorts or ranks a document space by the so called core journals. The retrieval test with 164 intellectually assessed topics from different abstracting and indexing databases in the social and political sciences, economics, psychology and medical science shows that documents in the core journals are significantly more often relevant than documents from zone 2 journals and peripheral journals. The paper shows that the implementation of Bradfordizing and other re-ranking approaches generates an immediate value-added for users.