How to optimize your search strategy using data visualization

In this video, we’ll look at how data visualization techniques can help us optimize and re-use search strategies.

The benefits offered by visualization become more apparent as the complexity of your search increases. For example, here is a relatively complex search string used by a recruiter to find social profiles for project managers in the Republic of Ireland. As you can see, it is quite hard to visualize how this search is structured, and even harder to debug or improve.

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The benefits of visual searching

In our previous video we learnt how to build a search strategy and then save it and create a shareable link to it. In this video, we learn how to use visual approaches to make our searches smarter and more efficient.

Let’s return to the previous example where our research question concerned the role of physical activity in preventing obesity in older people. One of the immediate benefits of the 2D approach is that it you can see hit counts for each search block, displayed in the top right hand corner. You can use these to better understand which parts of your search to focus on when optimising your query.

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Saving and sharing complex searches

In this short video we’re going to learn how to save, share and collaborate on structured searches.

Let’s return to the example we saw earlier, where our research question was to investigate promoting physical activity to prevent obesity in older people.

Choosing the correct terms can take some thought and effort but to save time in this video we have already entered our preferred terms on the canvas. To create the Boolean logic we saw earlier, we simply drag-and-drop terms to create groups:

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2Dsearch: latest release including Lens.org and Yandex

It’s been a little while in the making, but I am delighted this week to announce a new release of 2Dsearch. This contains a variety of bug fixes and improvement, notably support for:

• Lens.org (a patent search facility and knowledge resource containing over 200m records)
• Yandex (5th largest search engine worldwide)

We’re particularly excited about the support for Lens.org, as it opens up all sorts of possibilities to find meta-analysis, systematic reviews, review articles of topics you are interested in regardless of your discipline.

Moreover, you can now use 2Dsearch to search visually across 8 different databases, and use automated translations for many more.  We’ve also made various improvements to the quality of the query parsing and the help/guidance provided on the messages tab, and added an in-app link to our tutorial videos. In addition, search strategies are now saved with an annotations field for your own notes and shared by name (rather than anonymously).

We’ve lots more planned for the next release, so if you’d like to help shape this and/or have comments of your own then do let us know. We’d be delighted to hear from you!

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Intro to visual searching

In this short video we’re going to learn how to create a simple search strategy.

The best way to get started is to simply go to https://app.2dsearch.com and you’ll see a screen like this, with a drawing canvas on the left and a results pane on the right. At the moment our results pane is connected to Bing but you can see that other options are available. Note also that we can hide the results pane and show it at any time using this button. We also have various menu options available on the left which we’ll come to shortly.

To get started, we simply enter terms on the canvas. For example I can enter the terms hello and world and as I enter these terms, the results pane on the right updates dynamically. It starts to get interesting when we manipulate the objects on the canvas. For example, if I drag one term over the other it creates a new group with the default Boolean operator OR. Notice how the results pane on the right has again updated, showing this Boolean expression. If I want to change the operator I can simply edit it like this.

If I make a mistake I can just click the undo or redo buttons up here. Or I could just select an object and hit delete. I can create new terms or groups by copying and pasting like this. And I can add a negative term by entering it on the canvas and selecting the menu option apply not. If we want to see how our search looks as a traditional Boolean expression, we can click on the query tab.

In the next video, we’ll look at how to apply this to some real world searches.

Think outside the search box: https://www.2dsearch.com/

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NLP techniques for automated query suggestions

A key task in formulating effective search strategies is the identification of appropriate keywords and controlled vocabulary terms. Interactive features such as query expansion can play a key role in supporting these tasks. In this presentation we investigate a variety of methods for interactive query expansion based on manually curated resources (e.g. ontologies and terminologies) and on distributional methods (e.g. unsupervised machine learning). The results demonstrate the utility of distributional models and the value of using ngram order to optimise precision and recall. This work was due to be presented at the ISKO UK event Using knowledge organization to deliver content (which will hopefully be rescheduled later this year).

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London Information and Knowledge Exchange – a new approach to structured searching

Last week I was privileged to present at the London Information and Knowledge Exchange (LIKE) on the topic of “Think outside the search box: a AI-based approach to search strategy formulation“. LIKE are unusual in that their meetings often take place in the evening, accompanied by drinks and dinner. I’d not presented in a pub before, at least not over dinner, and had to work hard to resist the temptation to segue into some sort of ill-advised attempt at stand up comedy. It’s amazing what the combination of a hand held mic and a pint of Young’s pale ale can do…

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Challenges and solutions in structured searching

Researchers, information professionals, patent searchers and recruiters all require effective search to perform their duties, often relying on form-based query builders. However, these tools require the use of complex Boolean syntax and offer limited support for error checking or optimization. Moreover, this approach precipitates a number of other issues:

• Systematic literature review is the cornerstone of evidence-based medicine, but the search strategies used often contain errors
• Search strategies can be improved and optimised thorough peer-review, but the platforms for this practice are rarely open to public scrutiny
• Managing search strategies using document-centric tools such as MS Word or PDF introduces errors through unwanted conversion of control characters (e.g. quotation marks and truncation symbols), removal of spaces, addition of line breaks etc.
• Copy and pasting searches from documents/spreadsheets into search boxes introduces further errors
• Publishing search strategies as supplementary materials scales poorly and data can become lost over time

So I’m pleased to share the following webinar, which discusses these challenges and offers some solutions. It is presented by Farhad Shokraneh, who is an information specialist in the Cochrane Schizophrenia Group at the University of Nottingham. He is co-author of search chapter in Cochrane Handbook and an invited editor for Systematic Reviews and World Journal of Meta-Analysis. The webinar was kindly hosted by the Knowledge Synthesis Interest Group of the Canadian Health Libraries Association.

Think outside the search box: https://www.2dsearch.com/

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Build better searches using data visualization

Summer’s finally here, and with it comes another milestone for 2dSearch: alternative visualisations. The default ‘Nested’ view has its strengths, but it isn’t to everyones liking. So we’ve added two completely new ways to view, understand and optimise your searches:

• Tree View, which uses the metaphor of the family tree, with a root node at the top and successive generations of children below
• Inline View, which maps hierarchical structure onto physical structure with groups aligned a common midline, allowing a traditional left-to-right ‘Boolean string’ reading

And of course you still have the Nested View, which maps hierarchical structure onto a series of nested containers. And all of this for free! There’s lots more details in our Medium post, but for the best experience just try them out for yourself.

Think outside the search box: https://www.2dsearch.com/

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New views, new insights: data visualisation to optimise search and discovery

Have you ever had that moment when you’ve seen something out of the corner of your eye, then turned to look but it’s gone? We’re left feeling cheated, as if some magic took place that was never intended for our eyes. But the reality is often more prosaic: cells in the human retina are arranged such that movement and contrast are better perceived around the peripherae, while the central region is better suited to colour and detail. It’s a simple explanation, but one that reminds us that in order to better understand, we sometimes need to see in different ways.

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