concept indexing
n.
The process of creating an ordered list of headings, using terms that may not be found in the text, with pointers to relevant portions in the material.
Notes
Concept indexing draws headings from a controlled vocabulary, rather than relying on the terms found in the material that is indexed. Concept indexing is distinguished from extraction indexing, typically done by a computer, which relies exclusively on the terms found in the document. At one point, concept indexing was a manual process, requiring human judgment to link the headings to the ideas in the text. The process of assigning terms from a controlled vocabulary has been automated, with mixed success, by building rules of analysis that can assign headings on the basis of related terms in the text.
