Designing an integrated conceptual model for the machine indexing of Persian resources

<p dir="ltr"><b>Indexing is one of the tools that facilitate information retrieval and information services. This is important because it increases both the comprehensiveness and exclusivity in accessing documents. Due to the time-consuming nature of indexing processes and their heavy reliance on humans, this tool has not yet been able to expand its capabilities in the field of information retrieval and become widespread. Therefore, studies have been conducted for years to reduce or eliminate this dependency on humans, and many activities have been carried out to operationalize it. This field is known as machine or automatic indexing. Unfortunately, in our country, reliable activities in this field have not yet been carried out, and it can be said that it is one of the neglected areas in the fields of linguistics, librarianship, and information science. Given the background of the Iran Research Institute for Information Science and Technology in computational linguistics studies and implementations, it might be one of the most prepared platforms for the scientific and operational development of a machine indexer for the Persian language. In this regard, the present study aims to examine and understand the scientific and operational aspects of this system and to investigate the linguistic and operational requirements for implementing this project at the Iran Research Institute for Information Science and Technology. This report is the result of studies in this field and interviews with experts in linguistics and librarianship, as well as consultations with software engineering specialists. This report addresses the relationship between indexing and information retrieval (search), theoretical discussions, and the evolution of machine indexing from a theoretical perspective, practical and process-oriented machine indexing, successful projects carried out worldwide for different languages, and the requirements for machine indexing in the Persian language. Then, the components of a Persian language indexer are described, and a conceptual model of a machine indexer is precisely drawn, detailing the relationships between components, subsystem details, and the initial logical model of the designed system. Finally, the development requirements for a machine indexer for the research institute are discussed, and the status of current projects and experiences that can be useful in implementing this project are considered.</b></p>