A LEXICAL SIMPLIFICATION APPLICATION AND EFFECT IN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL

Gökhan Göksel

doi:10.18038/estubtda.1716842

EN

A LEXICAL SIMPLIFICATION APPLICATION AND EFFECT IN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL

Abstract

The application of lexical simplification techniques in this study aims to reduce vocabulary mismatch between user queries and document collections. Two distinct strategies —complex word substitution (Stg1) and query expansion with simplified alternative (Stg2)— are systematically evaluated across six benchmark datasets (FiQA, ArguAna, NFCorpus, SCIDOCS, SciFact, and TREC-COVID) using nDCG@10 and MAP utilizing dense and sparse neural retrieval models. Our experiments reveal that Stg1 consistently degrades retrieval performance, with nDCG@10 and MAP declines often exceeding 0.10 and 0.03, respectively. In contrast, Stg2 preserves nearly all baseline effectiveness, nDCG@10 drops by fewer than 0.02 points, MAP by fewer than 0.01, and in some instances even surpasses the baseline. Risk-sensitive evaluation further confirms that Stg2 incurs minimal or no per-query risk and exhibits promising results, whereas Stg1 uniformly harms effectiveness. These findings indicate that appending simplified term variants alongside original query terms offers a fair and robust means of addressing vocabulary mismatch without sacrificing precision or recall. It is recommended that future IR pipelines incorporate carefully tailored query simplification models to balance user query intent and high retrieval quality.

Keywords

Lexical simplification, Information retrieval, Complex word identification, Vocabulary mismatching, Query rewriting

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Details

Primary Language

English

Subjects

Natural Language Processing

Journal Section

Research Article

Authors

Gökhan Göksel ^*
0000-0003-1426-0279
Türkiye

Publication Date

September 25, 2025

Submission Date

June 10, 2025

Acceptance Date

September 19, 2025

Published in Issue

Year 2025 Volume: 26 Number: 3

DOI

https://doi.org/10.18038/estubtda.1716842

IZ

https://izlik.org/JA37JY29UK

APA

Göksel, G. (2025). A LEXICAL SIMPLIFICATION APPLICATION AND EFFECT IN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL. Eskişehir Technical University Journal of Science and Technology A - Applied Sciences and Engineering, 26(3), 363-378. https://doi.org/10.18038/estubtda.1716842

AMA

1.Göksel G. A LEXICAL SIMPLIFICATION APPLICATION AND EFFECT IN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL. Estuscience - Se. 2025;26(3):363-378. doi:10.18038/estubtda.1716842

Chicago

Göksel, Gökhan. 2025. “A LEXICAL SIMPLIFICATION APPLICATION AND EFFECT IN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL”. Eskişehir Technical University Journal of Science and Technology A - Applied Sciences and Engineering 26 (3): 363-78. https://doi.org/10.18038/estubtda.1716842.

EndNote

Göksel G (September 1, 2025) A LEXICAL SIMPLIFICATION APPLICATION AND EFFECT IN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL. Eskişehir Technical University Journal of Science and Technology A - Applied Sciences and Engineering 26 3 363–378.

IEEE

[1]G. Göksel, “A LEXICAL SIMPLIFICATION APPLICATION AND EFFECT IN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL”, Estuscience - Se, vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 363–378, Sept. 2025, doi: 10.18038/estubtda.1716842.

ISNAD

Göksel, Gökhan. “A LEXICAL SIMPLIFICATION APPLICATION AND EFFECT IN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL”. Eskişehir Technical University Journal of Science and Technology A - Applied Sciences and Engineering 26/3 (September 1, 2025): 363-378. https://doi.org/10.18038/estubtda.1716842.

JAMA

1.Göksel G. A LEXICAL SIMPLIFICATION APPLICATION AND EFFECT IN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL. Estuscience - Se. 2025;26:363–378.

MLA

Göksel, Gökhan. “A LEXICAL SIMPLIFICATION APPLICATION AND EFFECT IN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL”. Eskişehir Technical University Journal of Science and Technology A - Applied Sciences and Engineering, vol. 26, no. 3, Sept. 2025, pp. 363-78, doi:10.18038/estubtda.1716842.

Vancouver

1.Gökhan Göksel. A LEXICAL SIMPLIFICATION APPLICATION AND EFFECT IN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL. Estuscience - Se. 2025 Sep. 1;26(3):363-78. doi:10.18038/estubtda.1716842

Abstract

A LEXICAL SIMPLIFICATION APPLICATION AND EFFECT IN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL

Abstract

Keywords

References

Details

Primary Language

Subjects

Journal Section

Authors

Publication Date

Submission Date

Acceptance Date

Published in Issue

DOI

IZ

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