A system for query specific coherent text multi-document summarization

In this paper, we present a system called QueSTS, which generates a query specific extractive summary of a selected set of documents. We have proposed an integrated graph approach to represent the contextual relationships among sentences of all the input documents. These relationships are exploited and several sub-graphs of the integrated graph are constructed. These sub-graphs consist of sentences that are highly relevant to the query and that are highly related to each other. These sub-graphs are ranked by a scoring model. The highest ranked sub-graph which is rich in query relevant information is selected as a query specific summary. A sentence ordering strategy has also been proposed by us to improve the coherence of the summary. Sentences in the selected summary are sequenced as per the above strategy. Experimental results show that the summaries generated by the QueSTS system are significantly better than other systems in terms of user satisfaction. © 2010 World Scientific Publishing Company.