All in the mind : concept analysis in indexing

The indexing process consists of the comprehension of the document to be indexed, followed by the production of a set of index terms. Differences between academic indexing and back-of-book indexing are discussed. Text comprehension is a branch of human information processing, and it is argued that the model of text comprehension and production developed by van Dijk and Kintsch can form the basis for a cognitive process model of indexing. Strategies for testing such a model are suggested.