Passage Retrieval and other XML-Retrieval Tasks

At INEX there is an underlying assumption that XML-retrieval and element retrieval are one and the same. This is, in fact, not the case. The hypothesis at INEX is that XML markup is useful for information retrieval. We firmly believe this, but no longer in element retrieval. In this contribution we examine in detail the evidence collected in support of element retrieval and suggest that, contrary to expectation, it in fact supports passage retrieval and not element retrieval. Particularly, we draw on other studies that collectively show that INEX assessors are identifying relevant passages (not elements), they agree on where in a document those passages lie, that there already exists suitable metrics in the XML-retrieval community for evaluating passage retrieval algorithms, and that the tasks make more sense as passage retrieval tasks. Finally we show that future tasks of XML-retrieval also fit well with passage retrieval.