%0 Journal Article
%1 Robertson-Relevance-1976
%A Robertson, S. E.
%A Jones, Sparck K.
%C School of Library, Archive and Information Studies University College London London WC1E 6BT, England; Computer Laboratory University of Cambridge Cambridge CB2 3QG, England
%D 1976
%J Journal of the American Society for Information Science
%K ir ranking relevance weighting
%N 3
%P 129--146
%T Relevance weighting of search terms
%U http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.4630270302
%V 27
%X This paper examines statistical techniques for exploiting relevance information to weight search terms. These  techniques are presented as a natural extension of weighting methods using information about the distribution of index terms in documents in general. A series of relevance weighting functions is derived and is justified by theoretical considerations. In particular, it is shown that specific weighted search methods are implied by a general probabilistic theory of retrieval. Different applications of relevance weighting are illustrated by experimental results for test collections.