Bayesian networks and information retrieval:: an introduction to the special issue

Bayesian networks, which nowadays constitute the dominant approach for managing probability within the field of Artificial Intelligence, have been applied to Information Retrieval (IR) in different ways during the last 15 years, to solve a wide range of problems where uncertainty is an important feature. In this introductory paper, we first present a short bibliographical review of the works which have applied Bayesian networks to IR. The objective is not to show every approach thoroughly, but rather to provide a brief guide for those researchers who wish to start studying this area. Second, we briefly describe the papers in this special issue, which give a good clue about some of the new trends in the area of the application of Bayesian networks to IR. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.