KWIC / KWAC / KWOC

KWIC / KWAC / KWOC

KWIC index; keyword in context index, a kind of automatic indexing developed in 1958 at IBM by Hans Peter Luhn.

KWAC (= Keyword alongside context) and KWOC (= Keyword out of context) are modifications of KWIC. KWIC, KWAC, and KWOC are simple, mechanical term extraction indexes for text (usually titles) which retain some of the context (i.e. adjacent words).

Buckland (2003) provides the following example:

Cataloging and classification for Croatians. Treat "and" and "for" as stop words, i.e. not to be used as index terms.

KWIC Keyword In Context Each word that is not a stop-word becomes an entry word (aka lead term). Entry words are aligned within the page.

KWIC:

for Croatians.	Cataloging and classification
Cataloging and	classification for Croatians.
for	Croatians. Cataloging and classification

KWAC

Cataloging and classification for Croatians.
classification for Croatians. Cataloging and
Croatians. Cataloging and classification for

KWOC

Cataloging Cataloging and classification for Croatians.
classification Cataloging and classification for Croatians.
Croatians. Cataloging and classification for Croatians

Literature:

Buckland, M. (2003). http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/courses/is245/s03/verbal.html

Käki, M. (2006). fKWIC: Frequency-based keyword-in-context index for filtering Web search results. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 57(12), 1606-1615.

Taylor, A. (2000). Wynar's Introduction to Cataloging and Classification. 9th edition. Littleton, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited. (p. 408-411).

Luhn, H. P. (1959). Keyword-in-Context Index for Technical Literature (KWIC Index). Yorktown Heights, N. Y.: IBM.