Question-answering systems are recognized as popular and frequently effective means of information seeking on the web. In such systems, information seekers can receive a concise response to their queries by presenting their questions in natural language. Interactive question answering is a recently proposed and increasingly popular solution that resides at the intersection of question answering and dialogue systems. On the one hand, the user can ask questions in normal language and locate the actual response to her inquiry; on the other hand, the system can prolong the question-answering session into a dialogue if there are multiple probable replies, very few, or ambiguities in the initial request. By permitting the user to ask more questions, interactive question answering enables users to interact with the system and receive more precise results dynamically.

This survey offers a detailed overview of the interactive question-answering methods that are prevalent in current literature. It begins by explaining the foundational principles of question-answering systems, hence defining new notations and taxonomies to combine all identified works inside a unified framework. The reviewed published work on interactive question-answering systems is then presented and examined in terms of its proposed methodology, evaluation approaches, and dataset/application domain. We also describe trends surrounding specific tasks and issues raised by the community, so shedding light on the future interests of scholars. Our work is further supported by a GitHub page synthesizing all the major topics covered in this literature study. https://sisinflab.github.io/interactive-question-answering-systems-survey/

问答系统被认为是在网络上查找信息的流行且通常有效的手段。在这样的系统中，信息寻求者可以通过以自然语言提出他们的问题来接收对其查询的简明答复。交互式问答是最近提出的一种日益流行的解决方案，它位于问答系统和对话系统的交叉点上。一方面，用户可以用正常语言提出问题并找到对其询问的实际答复；另一方面，如果初始请求中有多个可能的答复、很少或含糊不清，系统可以将问答会话延长为对话。通过允许用户提出更多问题，交互式问答使用户能够与系统交互并动态地接收更精确的结果。

这项调查详细概述了当前文献中流行的交互式问答方法。它首先解释问答系统的基本原理，从而定义新的符号和分类法，将所有已识别的作品组合到一个统一的框架内。然后，根据其提出的方法、评估方法和数据集/应用领域，介绍和审查已发表的交互式问答系统的已发表工作。我们还描述了围绕社区提出的具体任务和问题的趋势，从而揭示了学者未来的兴趣。我们的工作得到了 GitHub 页面的进一步支持，该页面综合了本文献研究中涵盖的所有主要主题。 https://sisinflab.github.io/interactive-question-answering-systems-survey/