MTCIR: A multi-term tag cloud information retrieval system

•We built the tag cloud over an attribute of the whole database.•The tag cloud uses multi-term tags which provides context.•The tag cloud is supported by an underlying mathematical definition.•The tag cloud generation process has been clearly defined.•The tag cloud allows to improve semantics maintaining multi-terms together.

Processing and accessing database resources available on Internet is sometimes complex, specially when textual content is involved. A new user may need a general description of the contents available in the database in order to determine if the information is useful for his/her search needs. In this paper we present MTCIR, a system that summarizes the content of a database and provides the user with simple interfaces to access the information. The system uses a visual interface based on multi-term tag clouds, which presents the content of the database and can be used as assistance in the search process. The novelty of this approach is the underlying structure which provides the text with certain semantics and is able to retrieve the most relevant information. We test our proposal in four datasets and discuss the tag clouds obtained and the metrics computed for each of them.