Automatic Tailored Multi-Paper Summarization based on Rhetorical Document Profile and Summary Specification

In order to assist researchers in addressing time constraint and low relevance in using scientific articles, an automatic tailored multi-paper summarization (TMPS) is proposed. In this paper, we extend Teufel’s tailored summary to deal with multi-papers and more flexible representation of user information needs. Our TMPS extracts Rhetorical Document Profile (RDP) from each paper and presents a summary based on user information needs. Building Plan Language (BPLAN) is introduced as a formalization of Teufel’s building plan and used to represent summary specification, which is more flexible representation of user information needs. Surface repair is embedded within the BPLAN for improving the readability of extractive summary. Our experiment shows that the average performance of RDP extraction module is 94.46%, which promises high quality of extracts for summary composition. Generality evaluation shows that our BPLAN is flexible enough in composing various forms of summary. Subjective evaluation provides evidence that surface repair operators can improve the resulting summary readability.