CfP: SIGIR workshop on Peer-to-Peer Information Retrieval

                   Call for Papers

                  SIGIR workshop on
           Peer-to-Peer Information Retrieval

             Sheffield, UK, July 29, 2004

http://p2pir.is.informatik.uni-duisburg.de/cfp.html

Workshop theme:

Peer-to-peer (P2P) systems have emerged as a popular way to share huge
volumes of data. The P2P paradigm holds many promises: it couples
naturally with the Internet, the universal knowledge and service
exchange medium; it favors scalability, by allowing the seamless
plugging of data, services and computational resources into the global
system; it increases system resilience, by avoiding unique points of
failures; it can speed up global access by distributing the indexing
and query processing tasks to multiple computing nodes. However,
retrieval methods for P2P systems are still at their infancy. P2P
networks are prone to congestion when messages are not routed
intelligently. Many of the most effective routing or data placement
methods developed recently rely on relatively simple retrieval methods
and homogeneous network environments.

This workshop will focus on new methods of resource representation,
resource selection, and data fusion in peer-to-peer networks. The
workshop particularly encourages papers that address heterogeneous
peer-to-peer networks (e.g., a variety of data types and service
providers), as well as papers about methods that cope with partial and

CFP: ACM SIGIR Workshop on Information Retrieval in Context

SPIRE'04: deadline: May 22

Apologies for multiple postings.
============================================================================
CALL FOR PAPERS

SPIRE 2004 - 11th Symposium on
String Processing and Information Retrieval
Padova, Italy -- October 5-8, 2004

http://thepadovadialogues.dei.unipd.it/spire04

**** Paper submission:        May  22, 2004 ****

Authors notification:    June 30, 2004
Camera ready copies due: July 20, 2004

SUBMISSION WEB SITE:
http://thepadovadialogues.dei.unipd.it/spire04/openconf/

Deadline Approaching: SIGIR 2004 Bio Workshop

Dear Colleagues,

We would like to bring to your attention the following:

Call for Papers

SIGIR 2004 Workshop: Search and Discovery in Bioinformatics
July 29th, 2004, Sheffield, UK.

This workshop will be held as part of the 27th Annual International
ACM SIGIR Conference (July 25 - July 29, 2004) at Sheffield, UK.

Workshop Organizers: Javed Mostafa (jm@..., Indiana University)
and
Padmini Srinivasan (padmini-srinivasan@..., University of Iowa).

***********************************************************************
Deadline for submission of a position paper (5-8 pages) or a poster (2
page extended abstract): June 4, 2004.
***********************************************************************


Please look at the web site for full details:

http://lair.indiana.edu/sigirbio/

Brief excerpt of the workshop's scope and goals:

There are now numerous bioinformatics resources containing research
literature, genetic sequences, protein sequences, and protein structures.
Large-scale efforts are underway to organize these rapidly growing
resources and create effective tools for supporting access. Although there
is increasing interest among members of the information science community
in bioinformatics content, few forums exist where challenges in this area
are addressed from the perspective of information retrieval researchers.

A major goal of this workshop is to attract researchers interested in
various critical facets of bioinformatics information retrieval research,
and provide opportunities for sharing of current findings, discussing
major challenges, and developing networks of collaborators.

The major themes will be purposefully broad to encourage participation by
researchers with different perspectives on the information retrieval
challenges. Three themes will be given emphasis at the workshop:

1. Detecting entities, functions, and associations
2. Retrieval and discovery
3. Evaluation and Cyberinfrastructure

For full details please check the workshop website.

Best wishes,

Javed Mostafa and
Padmini Srinivasan

Workshop web site: http://lair.indiana.edu/sigirbio/

SIGIR 2004 Workshop 2nd CFP: Information Retrieval for Question Answering (IR4QA)

                       2nd Call for Papers

                        SIGIR'04 Workshop

           INFORMATION RETRIEVAL FOR QUESTION ANSWERING (IR4QA)

                   July 29, 2004, Sheffield, UK

Open domain question answering has become a very active research area
over the past few years, due in large measure to the stimulus of the
TREC Question Answering track. This track addresses the task of
finding *answers* to natural language (NL) questions (e.g. ``How
tall is the Eiffel Tower?" ``Who is Aaron Copland?'') from large text
collections. This task stands in contrast to the more conventional IR
task of retrieving *documents* relevant to a query, where the
query may be simply a collection of keywords (e.g. ``Eiffel Tower",
``American composer, born Brooklyn NY 1900, ...'').

Finding answers requires processing texts at a level of detail that
cannot be carried out at retrieval time for very large text
collections. This limitation has led many researchers to propose,
broadly, a two stage approach to the QA task. In stage one a subset of
query-relevant texts are selected from the whole collection.  In stage
two this subset is subjected to detailed processing for answer
extraction. To date stage one has received limited explicit attention,
despite its obvious importance -- performance at stage two is bounded
by performance at stage one.  The goal of this workshop is to correct
this situation, and, hopefully, to draw attention of IR researchers to
the specific challenges raised by QA.

A straightforward approach to stage one is to employ a conventional IR
engine, using the NL question as the query and with the collection
indexed in the standard manner, to retrieve the initial set of
candidate answer bearing documents for stage two.  However, a number
of possibilities arise to optimise this set-up for QA, including:
o preprocessing the question in creating the IR query;
o preprocessing the collection to identify significant information that
  can be included in the indexation for retrieval;
o adapting the similarity metric used in selecting documents;
o modifying the form of retrieval return, e.g. to deliver passages
  rather than whole documents.

For this workshop, we solicit papers that address any aspect of how
this first, retrieval stage of QA can be adapted to improve overall
system performance. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
o parametrizations/optimizations of specific IR systems for QA
o studies of query formation strategies suited to QA
o different uses of IR for factoid vs. non-factoid questions
o utility of term matching constraints, e.g. term proximity, for QA
o analyses of passage retrieval vs full document retrieval for QA
o analyses of boolean vs ranked retrieval for QA
o impact of IR performance on overall QA performance
o named entity preprocessing of questions or collections
o corpus preprocessing to create corpus-specific thesauri for question
  expansion
o evaluation measures for assessing IR for QA

The workshop will include paper presentations and discussion.  All
those wishing to make a presentation should submit a 5-8 page position
paper; other attendees may submit a short abstract on why this topic
is of interest to them. The papers should describe recent work and may
be preliminary in nature.  The programme committee will arrange the
presentations and discussion based on the quality of submissions and
expressed interests of the attendees, and may invite other
presentations as well. See http://www.sigir.org/sigir2004 for further
details.

Important Dates
===============

Position paper submission:    June 7
Acceptance notification:      June 23
Final papers due:             July 6
Workshop:                     July 29

Submission Instructions
=======================

Position papers should be no more than 4000 words (5-8 pages). The
standard ACM conference style is recommended (see:
http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html). Submissions must
be sent electronically in PDF or PostScript format to:

Rob Gaizauskas
R.Gaizauskas@...

Workshop Organizers
===================

Rob Gaizauskas          (University of Sheffield)
Mark Hepple             (University of Sheffield)
Mark Greenwood          (University of Sheffield)

Programme Committee
===================

Shannon Bradshaw        (University of Iowa)
Charles Clarke          (University of Waterloo)
Sanda Harabagiu         (University of Texas at Dallas)
Eduard Hovy             (University of Southern California)
Jimmy Lin               (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Christof Monz           (University of Maryland)
John Prager             (IBM)
Dragomir Radev          (University of Michigan)
Maarten de Rijke        (University of Amsterdam)
Horacio Saggion         (University of Sheffield)
Karen Sparck-Jones      (University of Cambridge)
Tomek Strzalkowski      (State University of New York, Albany)
Ellen Voorhees          (NIST)

metadata:: materia 12.5

I haven't done a write up of the meeting but thanks to all those who
contributed.. it raised what seem to me a number of quite basic points

there will be a full report on the web site

I think tho there is never enough humour in our deliberations so if
anyone wants to rest a real world information ...

I'd be curious to see who can solve, or propose a solution, to the
francis bacon problem :).. I have organised the next meeting on
metadata at the enlightenment gallery on the first thursday of
september at 6pm to which anyone on the list who is interested is
invited, and the evening is hosted by enlightenment consulting which
is entertaining... so perhaps another bottle of wine for the best
solution :)

This email has been scanned for all viruses by the MessageLabs Email
Security System.

ACM SIGIR MF/IR 2004

ACM SIGIR 2004 WORKSHOP

ON

MATHEMATICAL/FORMAL METHODS IN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL

MF/IR 2004

OBJECTIVE

The previous four workshops (ACM SIGIR MF/IR 2000, Athens, Greece; ACM SIGIR
MF/IR 2001, New Orleans, USA; ACM SIGIR MF/IR 2002, Tampere, Finland; ACM
SIGIR MF/IR 2003, Toronto, Canada) showed that the mathematical/formal
results achieved in Information Retrieval (IR) could be organized into a
coherent theoretical framework, that they brought new knowledge to IR, and
that mathematical/formal research in IR has established itself as a
specialized research area of IR. The increased attendance and rising
interest indicate that MF/IR is viable.

The purpose of the MF/IR 2004 workshop is, on the one hand, to continue and
enhance the results obtained so far, and on the other hand, to present,
discuss, analyze, integrate the newer/newest results. Therefore MF/IR 2004
aims at promoting discussion and interaction among those with theoretical
and applicative research interests in mathematical/formal aspects of
Information Retrieval coming from a ¾ potentially and relatively ¾ large
spectrum of different IR fields, and also at being a forum for the
presentation of both theoretical and applicative results (e.g., foundational
issues; description and/or integration of models; retrieval applications;
mathematical/formal techniques, properties and structures in IR; existing
and/or new theories and theoretical aspects).

There will be paper presentations, and it is planned to have an invited
speaker. Although the presentations should follow a conference style,
however, interaction and discussion are also of primary importance. The
presentations will be followed by a Discussion Panel, which has been very
successful in the previous MF/IR workshops.

Due to high interest in this workshop in previous years, paper presentations
will be selected on a peer review basis, just as in previous workshops. Due
to time constraints (one day workshop), the number of presentations seems to
be limited to around 15 papers, whereas the number of participants between
30 and 40. The members of the PC usually attend the workshop. It was also
very important to see in previous workshops that more and more young
researchers attended, and also more and more new research groups seemed to
establish themselves in the field of MF/IR.

The previous MF/IR workshops have been successful also financially, and got
good rating from participants. The best papers from the four previous MF/IR
events, once enhanced and revised, were selected for publication in special
topic issues by the Journal of the American Society of Information Science
and Technology, Journal of Information Retrieval, and Information Processing
& Management.

Participation is open to everyone.

TOPICS OF INTEREST

Contributions are solicited dealing with, but not limited to, the following
areas:

Information Retrieval

Information Filtering

Information Mining

Indexing and Retrieval

Hypermedia

World Wide Web Retrieval

Digital Libraries

Evaluation

User Modeling, and User Tasks

Semantic Web and Ontologies

Web Link Topology

where the different entities involved (e.g., documents, queries, relevance,
effectiveness, users, etc.) are modeled using any of, but not necessarily
limited to, the following approaches:

Classical Sets

Fuzzy Sets

Rough Sets

Vectors

Linear Space

Similarity Functions

Probability

Theory of Uncertainty

Functional Analysis

Algebra

Topology

Metric Spaces

Euclidean Geometry

Non-Euclidean Geometries

Boolean Logic

Non-standard Logics

Fuzzy Logic

Quantum Logic

Matroid Theory

Graph Theory

Theory of Computation

Recursion Theory

Information Theory

Artificial Intelligence

Statistical and Physical Methods

WORKSHOP CHAIRS

·        Sandor Dominich (University of Veszprém, Hungary)

·        C.J. "Keith" van Rijsbergen (University of Glasgow, Scotland, U.K.)

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

·        Peter       Bruza (Distr. Sys. Tech. Centre, Queensland, Australia)

·        Steven       Cater (Kettering University, U.S.A.)

·        Fabio       Crestani (University of Strathclyde, Scotland)

·        Sandor       Daranyi (University of Gothenburg, Boras, Sweden)

·        Leo       Egghe (Limburgs Universitair Centrum, Belgium)

·        Norbert       Fuhr (University of Dortmund, Germany)

·        Donald       H. Kraft (Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge,
U.S.A.)

·        Eduard      Hoenkamp (A.C.M., the Netherlands)

·        Theo       Huibers (KPMG Bus. Adv. Serv., the Netherlands)

·        April       Konthostathis (Ursinus College, U.S.A.)

·        Mounia      Lalmas (Queen Mary London, U.K.)

·        David       Losada (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain)

·        Jian-Yun       Nie (University of Montreal, Canada)

·        Gabriella       Pasi (ITIM-CNR, Milan, Italy)

·        Vijay       Raghavan (University of Louisiana at Lafayette, U.S.A.)

·        Michael       Wong (University of Regina, Canada

SUBMISSION

Submitted papers should be of at most 15 normal (A4) pages in length. Please
submit the paper in PDF or PS by e-mail to the following e-mail address

dominich@...

using "MF/IR 2004 Submission" as the e-mail subject line. The format for the
paper should follow a usual format in IR publishing. All submissions will be
reviewed by two referees. All accepted papers will be made available in a
printed and/or electronic proceedings. It is planned that a selected number
of accepted papers, once expanded and revised, be included in a
post-workshop journal issue.

CORRESPONDENCE

Direct correspondence, inquires and submissions relating to this workshop
should be addressed to:

Sandor Dominich, e-mail: dominich@...

IMPORTANT DATES

Submission of papers:                                     31 May 2004

Notification of acceptance:                              15 June 2004

Final submission:                                           30 June 2004

FURTHER INFORMATION

Further information can be found on the SIGIR 2004 Web site at
http://www.sigir2004.org/

2nd CfP Workshop Peer-to-Peer Information Retrieval

                   2nd Call for Papers

                  SIGIR workshop on
           Peer-to-Peer Information Retrieval

             Sheffield, UK, July 29, 2004

http://p2pir.is.informatik.uni-duisburg.de/cfp.html

Workshop theme:

Peer-to-peer (P2P) systems have emerged as a popular way to share huge
volumes of data. The P2P paradigm holds many promises: it couples
naturally with the Internet, the universal knowledge and service
exchange medium; it favors scalability, by allowing the seamless
plugging of data, services and computational resources into the global
system; it increases system resilience, by avoiding unique points of
failures; it can speed up global access by distributing the indexing
and query processing tasks to multiple computing nodes. However,
retrieval methods for P2P systems are still at their infancy. P2P
networks are prone to congestion when messages are not routed
intelligently. Many of the most effective routing or data placement
methods developed recently rely on relatively simple retrieval methods
and homogeneous network environments.

This workshop will focus on new methods of resource representation,
resource selection, and data fusion in peer-to-peer networks. The
workshop particularly encourages papers that address heterogeneous
peer-to-peer networks (e.g., a variety of data types and service
providers), as well as papers about methods that cope with partial and
uncertain information. However, more broadly, papers are solicited on
any topic related to information retrieval in peer-to-peer networks,
including the topics listed below.

     * Resource construction methods
     * Resource selection
     * Query routing
     * Data fusion
     * Metadata management
     * Multimedia retrieval
     * Heterogeneous services
     * Index structures
     * Specific architectures

Goal of the workshop:

This workshop will discuss current retrieval methods of P2P systems,
as well as the adaptation of distributed IR methods for P2P systems.
Planned Activities:

     * 1-3 invited presentations
     * paper presentations by workshop participants
     * Closing discussion: P2P IR - achievements and open issues

Submission:

Authors should submit full papers (not exceeding 5000 words) in
PDF  format using the submission tool at
http://p2pir.is.informatik.uni-duisburg.de/cfp.html

Important Dates:
June  4                 Paper submissions due
June 18                 Notifications of acceptance
July  2                 Camera-ready copy due
July 29                 Workshop

--
Gudrun Fischer
Address:  University of Duisburg-Essen
           Working group "Information Systems"
           Faculty 5, Institute of Informatics and Interactive Systems
           D-47048 Duisburg
           Germany
Homepage:
http://www.is.informatik.uni-duisburg.de/staff/members/fischer.html
E-Mail:   Gudrun.Fischer@...
Phone:    +49 (0) 203 379 2206

CfP Workshop New Directions For IR Evaluation: Online Conversations

                        Call for Participation
                      ACM SIGIR 2004 Workshop on
        New Directions For IR Evaluation: Online Conversations

                    Sheffield, UK, July 29th, 2004
              http://www.ict.usc.edu/~leuski/sigir04-oc/

In some respects, an online conversation is not very different from
the conversations people have been having for thousands of years.
Topics are introduced, ideas are shared, and sometimes enlightenment
is forthcoming.  Online conversations lack some of the
contextualizing factors (e.g., location) and non-verbal clues that are
present in face-to-face conversations (thus encouraging participants
to make their intent explicit), they are normally rendered at least
partially as electronic text (making them easier to manipulate) and
they are sometimes recorded and archived for future use (potentially
making them available for later use).

Examples of "online conversations" include personal electronic mail,
mailing lists, Instant Messaging (IM), Short Message Service (SMS)
notes, chat rooms, Usenet newsgroups, threaded Web-based discussion
lists, and massive multi-player role playing games.  Online
conversational content poses a number of interesting challenges to
systems designed to support access, including: (1) exploitation of
discourse and dialog structure (e.g., to support thread-based access),
(2) leveraging expressions of attitude, point of view, and affective
reaction, (3) the prevalence of informal language and emergent
sub-languages, and (4) the importance of establishing adequate context
to interpret retrieved content (e.g., for IM and SMS).

Goal

Our goal for this workshop is to identify opportunities for important
new research on online conversations and how this research can be
facilitated through the creation of standard community-wide resources
(e.g., development of standard test collections).  To do this, we plan
to bring together researchers from several communities with expertise
in aspects of this question (e.g., information retrieval, online
communities, computer-supported cooperative work, recommender system,
computational linguistics, and text data mining) to explore the
present state of the art and to synthesize multiple perspectives on
evaluation of systems for working with online conversations.  We will
count the workshop as successful if it results in a concrete
understanding of what types of evaluation resources are needed and how
those resources can practically be created.

Participation

This one-day workshop will be structured around paper presentations,
panel discussions, audience interaction, and informal discussions.

Papers.  Those interested in making a presentation should submit full
papers for review electronically in PDF format to the address given
below.  Papers should not exceed 8 pages in the standard SIGIR format,
including figures, tables, and references.

Statements. Those interested in participating as panelists or
discussion leaders should submit a brief (1-2 page) statement
describing their background, research interests, and (if appropriate)
proposed discussion points.

Open participation. The workshop is open to all interested
participants; advance submission of a paper or statement is
encouraged, but not required.

Both types of advance submissions are due on Friday, June 4 to both
leuski@... and oard@...  Paper
selections will be
announced by Friday, June 18.  A limited number of papers will be
selected for oral presentation in order to preserve time for
discussion; additional papers may be selected for presentation during
a poster session.  The final camera-ready version of selected papers
will be due on July 2.  Accepted papers and all statements of interest
will be published in the workshop proceedings, which will made
available on the workshop's Web site and distributed to participants
in hardcopy at the workshop.

Important Dates

June  4, 2004  Paper or statement of interest submission
June 18, 2004  Acceptance decision
July  2, 2004  Camera-ready paper due
July 25, 2004  SIGIR conference begins
July 29, 2004  Workshop date

Organizers:

Anton Leuski (co-chair), USC Institute for Creative Technologies
Douglas W. Oard (co-chair), University of Maryland
Abdur Chowdhury, America Online
David Evans, Clairvoyance
Jennifer Preece, University of Maryland, Baltimore County