Method and apparatus for automatically identifying keywords within a document

Claim 1

A method of generating a plurality of human intelligible keywords from an electronic, stored document including phrases, stop words delimiting the phrases, and punctuation, the method comprising the steps of: a) providing features selected to be indicative of word/phrase significance, providing a training document and a set of human intelligible keywords dependent upon the training document, and producing training results in dependence upon the document and the human intelligible keywords, the training results including parameter values indicative of feature weighting for weighting the provided features in order to determine a measure of word/phrase significance; b) using a computer to select from the document raw phrases comprised of one or more contiguous words excluding stop words, by utilizing slop words, or stop words and punctuation, to determine raw phrases to be selected; and, c) using a form or the raw phrases, generating the plurality of human intelligible keywords by evaluating the selected raw phrases based on the provided features and the parameter values, wherein the step of selecting raw phrases is performed in dependence upon the training results and in the absence of part-of-speech tagging and a lexicon of target human intelligible keywords.

Claim 2

A method of generating a plurality of human intelligible keywords from an electronic, stored document including phrases, stop words delimiting the phrases, and punctuation, the method comprising the steps of: a) providing features selected to be indicative of word/phrase significance, providing a training document and a set of human intelligible keywords dependent upon the training document, and producing training results in dependence upon the document and the human intelligible keywords, the training results including parameter values indicative of feature weighting for weighting the provided features in order to determine a measure of word/phrase significance; b) using a computer to select from the document raw phrases comprised of one or more contiguous words excluding stop words, by utilizing slop words, or stop words and punctuation, to determine raw phrases to be selected; and, c) using a form or the raw phrases, generating the plurality of human intelligible keywords by evaluating the selected raw phrases based on the provided features and the parameter values, wherein the step of selecting raw phrases is performed in dependence upon the training results and in the absence of part-of-speech tagging and a lexicon of target human intelligible keywords.

Claim 6

A method of generating a plurality of human intelligible keywords from an electronic, stored document including phrases, stop words delimiting the phrases, and punctuation, the method comprising the steps of: a) providing a plurality of parameter values relating to weights and determined through a process of training; b) using a computer to select from the document, raw phrases comprised of one or more contiguous words excluding stop words, and, c) using a form of the raw phrases, generating the plurality of human intelligible keywords by evaluating the selected raw phrases in dependence upon the parameter values used for weighting in order to determine a measure of human intelligible keyword significance, how closely a human intelligible keyword reflects the electronic, stored document.

Claim 7

A method of generating a plurality of human intelligible keywords from an electronic, stored document including phrases, stop words delimiting the phrases, and punctuation, the method comprising the steps of: a) providing a plurality of parameter values relating to weights and determined through a process of training; b) using a computer to select from the document, raw phrases comprised of one or more contiguous words excluding stop words, and, c) using a form of the raw phrases, generating the plurality of human intelligible keywords by evaluating the selected raw phrases in dependence upon the parameter values used for weighting in order to determine a measure of human intelligible keyword significance, how closely a human intelligible keyword reflects the electronic, stored document.

Claim 17

A method of generating a plurality of human intelligible keywords from an electronic, stored document including phrases, stop words delimiting the phrases, and punctuation, the method comprising the steps of: aa) providing a plurality of indicators and a weight associated with each of the indicators, each indicator and associated weight indicative of word/phrase significance within the document; a) generating a list of words within the document that are not stop words for determining a score in dependence upon an evaluation of each word of the list in dependence upon the plurality of indicators and the associated and same weights for each indicator, scores for different words in the list determined using same indicators and same weights; b) ordering the list of words in dependence upon scores; contiguous words excluding stop words: and, c) for each word in the list, selecting all raw phrases of one or more words containing a word having a predetermined similarity for determining a score for each selected raw phrase; and, d) replacing said word in the list with a most desirable word/phrase comprising a word having a predetermined similarity.

Claim 18

A method of generating a plurality of human intelligible keywords from an electronic, stored document including phrases, stop words delimiting the phrases, and punctuation, the method comprising the steps of: aa) providing a plurality of indicators and a weight associated with each of the indicators, each indicator and associated weight indicative of word/phrase significance within the document; a) generating a list of words within the document that are not stop words for determining a score in dependence upon an evaluation of each word of the list in dependence upon the plurality of indicators and the associated and same weights for each indicator, scores for different words in the list determined using same indicators and same weights; b) ordering the list of words in dependence upon scores; contiguous words excluding stop words: and, c) for each word in the list, selecting all raw phrases of one or more words containing a word having a predetermined similarity for determining a score for each selected raw phrase; and, d) replacing said word in the list with a most desirable word/phrase comprising a word having a predetermined similarity.