Method and apparatus for finding a set of documents relevant to a focus set using citation analysis and spreading activation techniques

A program storage device readable by a machine, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by the machine to perform method steps predicting documents relevant to a focus document within a collection of linked documents, said method comprising the steps of:

• a) generating initial activation information, said initial activation information indicating a set of focus documents in said collection of linked documents;
• b) generating citation information from the documents in said collection of linked documents, said citation information indicating a strength of association between documents in said collection of linked documents;
• c) generating link probability information from usage data for said collection of linked documents, said link probability information indicating a distribution of the number of documents a user will access in said collection of linked documents;
• d) performing a spreading activation operation based on said initial activation information, citation information and said probability information based on a network representation of said collection of linked documents;
• and
• f) extracting said document relevance information resulting from said spreading activation step when a stable pattern of activation across all nodes of said network representation of said collection of linked documents is reached.

A system for predicting documents relevant to a focus document in a linked collection of documents, said system comprising:

• means for obtaining initial activation information, said initial activation information indicating a set of focus documents in said collection of linked documents;
• means for obtaining raw data for said linked collection of documents, said raw data including citation data amongst said documents in said linked collection of documents;
• means for creating a citation map for said linked collection of documents from said raw data;
• means for generating link probability information from usage data for said collection of linked documents, said link probability information indicating a distribution of the number of documents a user will access in said collection of linked documents;
• and
• means for predicting a set of documents relevant to said focus document using a spreading activation technique on a network representation of said collection of linked documents, said citation map and said link probability information.