Semantic processing in information retrieval

Intuition suggests that one way to enhance the information retrieval process would be the use of phrases to characterize the contents of text. A number of researchers, however, have noted that phrases alone do not improve retrieval effectiveness. In this paper we briefly review the use of phrases in information retrieval and then suggest extensions to this paradigm using semantic information. We claim that semantic processing, which can be viewed as expressing relations between the concepts represented by phrases, will in fact enhance retrieval effectiveness. The availability of the UMLS domain model, which we exploit extensively, significantly contributes to the feasibility of this processing.