{
  "altLabels": [
    "Document Search"
  ],
  "definition": "A retrieval task in which the retrievable units are documents rather than passages, entities, answers, or other smaller or more structured objects.",
  "derivedRelations": [
    {
      "note": "INEX is an evaluation initiative; document retrieval is a retrieval task evaluated by some INEX-style resources.",
      "target": "inex",
      "type": "notEquivalentTo"
    },
    {
      "target": "arguana",
      "type": "related"
    },
    {
      "target": "corpus",
      "type": "related"
    },
    {
      "target": "fever",
      "type": "related"
    },
    {
      "target": "inex",
      "type": "related"
    },
    {
      "target": "nfcorpus",
      "type": "related"
    },
    {
      "target": "scifact",
      "type": "related"
    },
    {
      "target": "trec-covid",
      "type": "related"
    }
  ],
  "distinctions": [
    {
      "reason": "Document retrieval targets documents; entity search targets entities or entity-oriented information.",
      "statement": "Document Retrieval is not Entity Search.",
      "target": "entity-search",
      "targetLabel": "Entity Search",
      "targetUri": "https://id.searchplex.net/entity-search/"
    },
    {
      "reason": "Document retrieval returns documents as the primary retrievable units; passage retrieval returns passages or passage-like segments.",
      "statement": "Document Retrieval is not Passage Retrieval.",
      "target": "passage-retrieval",
      "targetLabel": "Passage Retrieval",
      "targetUri": "https://id.searchplex.net/passage-retrieval/"
    },
    {
      "reason": "Document retrieval returns documents for an information need; question answering aims to return answers, answer-bearing snippets, or generated responses.",
      "statement": "Document Retrieval is not Question Answering.",
      "target": "question-answering",
      "targetLabel": "Question Answering",
      "targetUri": "https://id.searchplex.net/question-answering/"
    }
  ],
  "id": "document-retrieval",
  "kind": "Task",
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/",
  "links": [
    {
      "label": "Overview of the TREC 2019 Deep Learning Track",
      "type": "definingReference",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.07820"
    }
  ],
  "modifiedAt": "2026-09-14T06:43:46Z",
  "prefLabel": "Document Retrieval",
  "publisher": {
    "name": "Searchplex",
    "url": "https://searchplex.net/"
  },
  "relations": [
    {
      "target": "retrieval",
      "type": "broader"
    },
    {
      "note": "Document retrieval targets documents; entity search targets entities or entity-oriented information.",
      "target": "entity-search",
      "type": "notEquivalentTo"
    },
    {
      "note": "Document retrieval returns documents as the primary retrievable units; passage retrieval returns passages or passage-like segments.",
      "target": "passage-retrieval",
      "type": "notEquivalentTo"
    },
    {
      "note": "Document retrieval returns documents for an information need; question answering aims to return answers, answer-bearing snippets, or generated responses.",
      "target": "question-answering",
      "type": "notEquivalentTo"
    },
    {
      "target": "ad-hoc-retrieval",
      "type": "related"
    },
    {
      "target": "ranking",
      "type": "related"
    },
    {
      "target": "web-search",
      "type": "related"
    }
  ],
  "representations": {
    "html": "https://id.searchplex.net/document-retrieval/",
    "json": "https://id.searchplex.net/document-retrieval.json",
    "jsonld": "https://id.searchplex.net/document-retrieval.jsonld"
  },
  "scheme": "https://id.searchplex.net/scheme/",
  "scopeNote": "Document retrieval is a core IR task formulation and is often used in ad hoc retrieval and web-search evaluation. It is distinct from passage retrieval, which retrieves passage-like units, and from question answering, which aims to return answers rather than documents.",
  "status": "published",
  "terms": [
    {
      "community": "industry",
      "label": "Enterprise Document Search",
      "usage": "nearSynonym"
    },
    {
      "community": "industry",
      "label": "Knowledge Base Search",
      "usage": "informal"
    }
  ],
  "uri": "https://id.searchplex.net/document-retrieval/"
}