Rule-based information extraction is dead! Long live rule-based information extraction systems!

Abstract

The rise of "Big Data" analytics over unstructured text has led to renewed interest in information extraction (IE). We surveyed the landscape of IE technologies and identified a major disconnect between industry and academia: while rule-based IE dominates the commercial world, it is widely regarded as dead-end technology by the academia. We believe the disconnect stems from the way in which the two communities measure the benefits and costs of IE, as well as academia's perception that rule-based IE is devoid of research challenges. We make a case for the importance of rule-based IE to industry practitioners. We then lay out a research agenda in advancing the state-of-the-art in rule-based IE systems which we believe has the potential to bridge the gap between academic research and industry practice.