A User-Oriented Model for Expert Finding

Expert finding addresses the problem of retrieving a ranked list of people who are knowledgeable on a given topic. Several models have been proposed to solve this task, but so far these have focused solely on returning the most knowledgeable people as experts on a particular topic. In this paper we argue that in a real-world organizational setting the notion of the “best expert” also depends on the individual user and her needs. We propose a user-oriented approach that balances two factors that influence the user’s choice: time to contact an expert, and the knowledge value gained after. We use the distance between the user and an expert in a social network to estimate contact time, and consider various social graphs, based on organizational hierarchy, geographical location, and collaboration, as well as the combination of these. Using a realistic test set, created from interactions of employees with a university-wide expert search engine, we demonstrate substantial improvements...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: ECIR
• Authors: Elena Smirnova, Krisztian Balog
• Keywords: ECIR 2011, Expert Search Engine, Information Technology, Organizational Hierarchy, Realistic Test