ActiveSearch: an agent for suggesting similar documents based on user´s preferences

This paper presents the ActiveSearch Agent, a proactive agent for suggesting similar documents to the one being browsed/edited by the user. It was designed to provide access to different documents bases in the Internet (through meta-searches to available search engines), in Intranets and in local directories, as well as to process different documents´ formats (e.g., HTML, DOC, PS). The retrieval process is on-line, and it is based on the document´s content and on the user´s preferences. The algorithm used to measure similarity between documents is based on Vector Space model. The prototype runs in Windows OS. Preliminary tests demonstrated a very good system´s performance with a superiority of 34 percentile points in the precision in relation to the GoogleToolbar