Information retrieval on mind maps - what could it be good for?

Mind maps are used by millions of people. In this paper we present how information retrieval on mind maps could be used to enhance expert search, document summarization, keyword based search engines, document recommender systems and determining word relatedness. For instance, words in a mind map could be used for creating a skill profile of the mind maps' author and hence enhance expert search. This paper is a research-in-progress paper which means no research results are presented but only ideas.