Clipping: a technique for improving retrieval performance

The authors present a technique for improving retrieval performance which they call clipping. Clipping is based on the manipulation of the original query terms, without attempting query expansion. The idea is to use a small set of query terms, which they call a clipping set, to clip the original answer set, reducing the number of documents in it. They discuss the alternatives that such a clipping technique opens up and characterize what they call the clipping problem. This problem consists basically of finding a good clipped answer set (i.e., one which yields improved retrieval performance) among many possible ones. They show that, for queries with a proper formulation, gains in precision as high as 50% can be obtained