Information Retrieval

Code:

CINF045

Acronym:

RI

Keywords
Classification	Keyword
OFICIAL	Information Science

Instance: 2025/2026 - 1S

Active?	Yes
Web Page:	https://moodle2526.up.pt/course/view.php?id=4350
Responsible unit:	Department of Informatics Engineering
Course/CS Responsible:	Bachelor of Arts in Information Science

Cycles of Study/Courses

Acronym	No. of Students	Study Plan	Curricular Years	Credits UCN	Credits ECTS	Contact hours	Total Time
CINF	42	Study plan	3	-	6	41	162

Teaching language

Portuguese

Objectives

The "Information Retrieval" course assumes as its context the existence of large collections of information and the need for methods and tools for information retrieval on extensive heterogeneous collections.

We aim to:
1. Make the students feel the difference between structured and unstructured information and the difference between documents having associated descriptions or not.
2. Make the students familiar with the main concepts in textual information retrieval and their application in retrieval tools.
3. Use well-established methods in information retrieval to evaluate retrieval tools.

Learning outcomes and competences

On completion of this course, the student should be able to: 

-Identify information retrieval tasks performed with specific tools or embedded in services; 
-Describe the retrieval tools and their components; 
-Distinguish classical information retrieval models, identifying their principles, document models and similarity measures; 
-Clearly separate the indexing and search modules in information retrieval tools; 
-Perform web retrieval tasks using advanced search modes; 
-For a document collection and a retrieval task, create an appropriate document model and specify automatic methods for processing the documents; 
-Calculate several reference measures for evaluating retrieval systems; 
-Participate in retrieval evaluation efforts, providing relevance judgments for selected topics;
-Describe web information retrieval, namely in what concerns document diversity and authority estimation;
-Relate textual information retrieval with its extensions to voice and image, identifying the open problems. 

Working method

Presencial

Program

Information retrieval and its tasks. Information retrieval versus data retrieval. The evolution of information retrieval. The information retrieval process. General features of retrieval systems.

Information retrieval models. Boolean model, vectorial model, probabilistic model.

Processing documents and queries: lexical analysis, stemming, compression. Index construction.

Retrieval using indexes. Term weights and document ranking.

Evaluation in retrieval systems. Test collections, topics and relevance judgments.

Web information retrieval. Crawling and indexing. Link analysis.

Mandatory literature

Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Berthier Ribeiro-Neto; Modern information retrieval. ISBN: 978-0321416919
Manning, Christopher D.; Introduction to information retrieval. ISBN: 978-0-521-86571-5

Complementary Bibliography

Vários autores; Interactive Information Seeking, Behaviour and Retrieval, Ian Ruthven, Diane Kelly, 2011. ISBN: 978-1-85604-707-4

Teaching methods and learning activities

Lectures are used to present the course subjects, discuss selected topics, and make workshop sessions with student project results.

Lab classes are used for small exercises applying the concepts and techniques introduced in the course. Classes at the end of the semester are reserved for the presentation of practical work.

The evaluation of the unit includes practical work in the form of an information retrieval evaluation project. The project involves performing search, relevance judgments on the results and the calculation of retrieval measures.

Software

Microsoft Excel

Evaluation Type

Distributed evaluation with final exam

Assessment Components

Designation	Weight (%)
Exame	40,00
Participação presencial	10,00
Trabalho escrito	10,00
Trabalho laboratorial	30,00
Apresentação/discussão de um trabalho científico	10,00
Total:	100,00

Amount of time allocated to each course unit

Designation	Time (hours)
Estudo autónomo	58,00
Frequência das aulas	41,00
Trabalho escrito	13,00
Trabalho laboratorial	40,00
Apresentação/discussão de um trabalho científico	10,00
Total:	162,00

Eligibility for exams

To obtain attendance, students may not exceed the limit of absences in practical classes (25% of the total number of practical sessions). In addition, they must be part of a project group and submit the two required deliverables associated with the practical assignment.

Calculation formula of final grade

Ordinary students
Mark = round (40% * exam + 10% * practical exercises + 30% * project + 10% * participation in lectures + 10% article presentation/discussion)

Students with special "non-atendance" status
Mark = round( 50% * exam + 40% * project + 10% article presentation/discussion)

The final classification of the project can vary from element to element in the same group, plus or minus 2 values, based on the inner assessment performed by each group.

Minimum grade of 40% in Project and Exam.

Students may use the project grade obtained in the immediately preceding academic year. In this case, they must inform the professor responsible for the course during the first week of classes.

Special assessment (TE, DA, ...)

Students who attend under regimes other than the ordinary one carry out the project and the article presentation/discussion when it takes place for other students.

Classification improvement

The exam component can be improved in the same edition in the appeal exam. The project component cannot be improved in the same academic year, but can, however, be improved in the following edition of the course. The remaining components cannot be improved.

Observations

The official language is Portuguese. However, classes may adopt English in part if the course has foreign students. Slides are in English.