Distributed Top-N Query Processing with Possibly Uncooperative Local Systems.

http://www.vldb.org/conf/2003/papers/S05P02.pdf Clement T. Yu George Philip Weiyi Meng Distributed Top-N Query Processing with Possibly Uncooperative Local Systems. 2003 VLDB 117-128 db/conf/vldb/vldb2003.html#YuPM03