Retrieval status value

In information retrieval , the retrieval status value ( RSV for short ) is a value that is assigned to the results of a search query in various retrieval models and provides information about how relevant the corresponding result is. The results are then sorted in descending order according to the RSV.

In vector space-based models, the RSV is usually defined by the scalar product of the query vector and the vector of a document, for example by the cosine similarity . In probabilistic retrieval models, the calculated probability that a given document is relevant to the query generally serves as the RSV.

Some models, such as the set-based (simple) Boolean retrieval , do not generate an RSV and therefore cannot order the documents that are considered relevant.