TECHNIQUES FOR EXTRACTING AUTHORSHIP DATES OF DOCUMENTS
Various technologies and techniques are disclosed for calculating authorship dates for a document. A portion of a document to select to look for possible authorship dates is determined. The possible authorship dates are extracted from the portion of the document. A revised authorship date of the document is generated using a neural network. The revised authorship date is returned to an application or process that requested the date.
1 . A method for calculating a revised authorship date for a document using a neural network comprising the steps of:
determining a portion of a document to select to look for possible authorship dates;
retrieving the possible authorship dates from the portion of the document; and
generating a revised authorship date of the document using a neural network.
2 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising the steps of:
performing date normalization to revise a format of the revised authorship date.
3 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the neural network is a single layer neural network.
4 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the generating the revised authorship date step comprises the steps of:
accessing a possible authorship date from the possible authorship dates that were retrieved;
extracting features for the possible authorship date;
giving a weight to the features;
calculating an overall probability score for the features;
when the overall probability score is above a pre-determined threshold, adding the possible authorship date to a list of possible authorship dates for the document;
repeating the accessing, extracting, giving, calculating, and adding steps for each of the possible authorship dates accessed in the portion of the document; and
choosing the revised authorship date from the list of possible authorship dates.
5 . The method of claim 4 , wherein the revised authorship date is chosen by selecting a date with a highest overall probability score in the list of possible authorship dates.
6 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising the steps of:
outputting the revised authorship date to a requesting application.
7 . The method of claim 6 , wherein the revised authorship date is output to a search engine.
8 . The method of claim 6 , wherein the revised authorship date is output to a content management application.
9 . The method of claim 6 , wherein the revised authorship date is output to a file copy process.
10 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the determining, retrieving, and generating steps are initiated upon request from a requesting application for the revised authorship date of the document.
11 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the portion of the document to select is a pre-defined number of characters from one or more sections of the document.
12 . The method of claim 11 , wherein the one or more sections of the document include a beginning section and an ending section of the document.
13 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the possible authorship dates are retrieved based upon rules for identifying dates in a plurality of formats.
14 . A method for calculating a revised authorship date for a document comprising the steps of:
retrieving a possible authorship date from a document;
extracting features for the possible authorship date;
giving a weight to the features;
calculating an overall probability score for the features;
when the overall probability score is above a pre-determined threshold, adding the possible authorship date to a list of possible authorship dates for the document;
repeating the retrieving, extracting, giving, calculating, and adding steps for a plurality of possible authorship dates; and
choosing the revised authorship date from the list of possible authorship dates.
15 . The method of claim 14 , wherein the revised authorship date is chosen by selecting a date with a highest overall probability score in the list of possible authorship dates.
16 . The method of claim 14 , wherein the revised authorship date is chosen by using a single layer neural network.
17 . A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for causing a computer to perform steps comprising:
receiving a request from a requesting application for an authorship date for a document;
calculating the authorship date for the document using a neural network; and
sending the authorship date back to the requesting application.
18 . The computer-readable medium of claim 17 , wherein the requesting application is an application that is displaying the document.
19 . The computer-readable medium of claim 17 , wherein the requesting application is a search engine.
20 . The computer-readable medium of claim 17 , wherein the requesting application is a content management application.