Indexing 2 - Relevancy and nexterms in Nexis

Relevancy
In previous newsletters we discussed searching via LexisNexis SmartIndexing. To add more power to your Nexis searches, each term is tagged with a relevancy score. By creating a search based on relevancy, you have greater control over the results that are returned. For example, if you are only concerned with major references to the subject water in a topic, you can look for documents that are tagged with a certain relevancy or above. There are two search terms associated with searching by relevancy. If I was looking for a relevancy of greater than 90%, I would add one of these to my search syntax after the index term e.g. 9*% or #90plus#. An example of a search for mentions of water with greater than 90% relevance would be: subject(water 9*%) or alternatively, subject(water #90plus#).

As a general rule, the following guidelines apply regarding interpreting these percentages:

<80%: The article mentions the topic

~80+%: The article is relevant to the topic

~85+%: The article is highly relevant to this topic.

90+%: The article deals almost exclusively with this topic.

Nexterms
Nexterms(…) is a broader version of terms(…); whereas terms(…) specifies that an article must have been indexed as relevant to the topic, nexterms(…) will include articles that mention the phrase in brackets even if the article was not indexed as being relevant.

Are these search tips helpful? Do you have some you'd like to share? Let us know at upfront@lexisnexis.com.au.