Authorship Attribution
Foundations and Trends® in
Information Retrieval
Volume 1 Issue 3
DOI: 10.1561/1500000005
Authorship Attribution
Patrick Juola
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Duquesne University, 600 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15282, USA, juola@mathcs.duq.edu
SUGGESTED CITATION:
Patrick
Juola
(2006)
"Authorship Attribution",
Foundations and Trends® in Information Retrieval: Vol. 1: No 3, pp 233-334.
http:/dx.doi.org/10.1561/1500000005
Abstract
Authorship attribution, the science of inferring characteristics of the author from the characteristics of documents written
by that author, is a problem with a long history and a wide range of application. Recent work in “non-traditional” authorship
attribution demonstrates the practicality of automatically analyzing documents based on authorial style, but the state of
the art is confusing. Analyses are difficult to apply, little is known about type or rate of errors, and few “best practices”
are available. In part because of this confusion, the field has perhaps had less uptake and general acceptance than is its
due.
This review surveys the history and present state of the discipline, presenting some comparative results when available.
It shows, first, that the discipline is quite successful, even in difficult cases involving small documents in unfamiliar
and less studied languages; it further analyzes the types of analysis and features used and tries to determine characteristics
of well-performing systems, finally formulating these in a set of recommendations for best practices.