Topic themes for multi-document summarization

ABSTRACT

The problem of using topic representations for multi-document summarization (MDS) has received considerable attention recently. In this paper, we describe five different topic representations and introduce a novel representation of topics based on topic themes. We present eight different methods of generating MDS and evaluate each of these methods on a large set of topics used in past DUC workshops. Our evaluation results show a significant improvement in the quality of summaries based on topic themes over MDS methods that use other alternative topic representations.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.0 General

General Terms:
Algorithms, Experimentation, Performance

Keywords:
summarization, topic themes