A Process Model for Goal-Based Information Retrieval

In this paper we examine the domain of information search and propose a “goal-based” approach to study search strategy. We describe “goal-based information search” using a framework of Knowledge Discovery. We identify two Information Retrieval (IR) goals using the constructs of Knowledge Acquisition (KA) and Knowledge Explanation (KE). We classify these constructs into two specific information problems: An exploration-exploitation problem and an implicitexplicit problem. Our proposed framework is an extension of prior work in this domain, applying an IR Process Model originally developed for Legal-IR and adapted to Medical-IR. The approach in this paper is guided by the recent ACM-SIG Medical Information Retrieval (MedIR) Workshop definition: “methodologies and technologies that seek to improve access to medical information archives via a process of information retrieval.”