Abstract

ABSTRACT. This paper describes new methods of automatically extracting documents for screening purposes, i.e. the computer selection of sentences having the greatest potential for conveying to the reader the substance of the document. While previous work has focused on one component of sentence significance, namely, the presence of high-frequency content words (key words), the methods described here also treat three additional components: prag-matic words (cue words); title and heading words; and structural indicators (sentence loca-tion). The research has resulted in an operating system and a research methodology. The extract-ing system is parameterized to control and vary the influence of the above four components. The research methodology includes procedures for the compilation of the required dictionaries, the setting of the control parameters, and the comparative evaluation of the automatic extracts with manually produced extracts. The results indicate that the three newly proposed com-ponents dominate the frequency component in the production of better extracts. KEY WORDS AND PHRASES: automatic extracting, automatic abstracting, sentence selection, document screening, sentence significance, relevance, content words, key words, pragmatic

Citations

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