A method and system for determining the focus of a document are provided. Candidate topics in the form of topic nodes in a hierarchy of topics are input into a focus determining algorithm. For each candidate topic node, a score is allocated to the topic of each level of the hierarchy of the topic node , the scores for each topic are summed and one or more topics are determined to be the focus of the document based on the scores. The scores allocated to the topic of each parent level of the hierarchy of the topic node are progressively lower for the topic of each parent level of the hierarchy. The candidate topics may be provided by identifying occurrences of references to a topic in a document, providing a plurality of possible topics in the form of topic nodes in a hierarchy of topics, and, for each identified occurrence of a reference to a topic, determining the appropriate topic node and adding the topic node to the candidate topics.