Searchplex ID Retrieval terminology registry

Task

Document Retrieval

Canonical ID https://id.searchplex.net/document-retrieval/

A retrieval task in which the retrievable units are documents rather than passages, entities, answers, or other smaller or more structured objects.

Also called

  • Document Search

Scope

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.

Observed terms

  • Enterprise Document Search industry
  • Knowledge Base Search industry

Part of family

Not equivalent to

  • Document Retrieval is not Entity Search. Document retrieval targets documents; entity search targets entities or entity-oriented information.
  • Document Retrieval is not Passage Retrieval. Document retrieval returns documents as the primary retrievable units; passage retrieval returns passages or passage-like segments.
  • Document Retrieval is not Question Answering. Document retrieval returns documents for an information need; question answering aims to return answers, answer-bearing snippets, or generated responses.
  • Document Retrieval is not INEX. INEX is an evaluation initiative; document retrieval is a retrieval task evaluated by some INEX-style resources.

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ID