The ALVIS Format for Linguistically Annotated Documents

TL;DR

The paper introduces the ALVIS annotation format, a standardized XML-based stand-off annotation system for linguistically annotated documents, exemplified on biological domain texts for improved topic-specific search engine indexing.

Contribution

It presents a novel, standardized annotation format tailored for large document collections, emphasizing stand-off annotations and XML encoding for enhanced search engine integration.

Findings

Effective indexing of biological documents demonstrated

Stand-off annotations facilitate flexible linguistic analysis

XML encoding supports interoperability and scalability

Abstract

The paper describes the ALVIS annotation format designed for the indexing of large collections of documents in topic-specific search engines. This paper is exemplified on the biological domain and on MedLine abstracts, as developing a specialized search engine for biologists is one of the ALVIS case studies. The ALVIS principle for linguistic annotations is based on existing works and standard propositions. We made the choice of stand-off annotations rather than inserted mark-up. Annotations are encoded as XML elements which form the linguistic subsection of the document record.