Call for bids to host AIRS 2012

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CALL FOR BIDS TO HOST
The Eighth Asia Information Retrieval Societies Conference
(AIRS 2012)
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The Asia Information Retrieval Societies Conference (AIRS) aims to bring
together researchers and developers to exchange new ideas and latest
achievements in the field of information retrieval (IR). The scope of the
conference covers all the aspects, including applications, systems,
technologies and theory, of information retrieval in text, audio, image,
video, multimedia and social data, but with a particular emphasis on
handling Asian languages.

The AIRS Steering Committee invites interested parties to
submit bids to host AIRS 2012.

Detailed instructions for submitting a bid are available at
the AIRS Steering Committee homepage:
http://research.microsoft.com/airs

IMPORTANT DATES:

NOVEMBER 30, 2011: Bid submissions due
DECEMBER 18-20, 2011: Decision announced at AIRS 2011
http://www.uowdubai.ac.ae/airs2011/
and on the AIRS Steering Committee homepage:
http://research.microsoft.com/airs

WHERE TO SUBMIT:

Please submit the bid document as an email attachment
to one of the current AIRS Steering Committee members:

Hsin-Hsi Chen (hhchen@csie.ntu.edu.tw )
Wai Lam (wlam@se.cuhk.edu.hk )
Gary Lee (lee.garygeunbae@gmail.com )
Alistair Moffat (ammoffat@unimelb.edu.au )
Hwee Tou Ng (nght@comp.nus.edu.sg )
Tetsuya Sakai (tetsuyasakai@acm.org )
Dawei Song (d.song@rgu.ac.uk )
Masaharu Yoshioka (yoshioka@ist.hokudai.ac.jp )

Call for NTCIR-10 Task Proposals

Call for NTCIR-10 Task Proposals

NTCIR is a series of evaluation workshops designed to enhance research in Information Access (IA) technologies such as Information Retrieval, Question Answering, Text Summarisation, Opinion Analysis, etc. NTCIR-9, the ninth cycle of the workshops, saw several changes, including community-led task coordination and a new workshop management structure where Task Organisers, Program Chairs and General Chairs share different responsibilities.

We were excited to see six brand new tasks that were accepted as NTCIR-9 tasks and run successfully. Their outcomes will be presented at the NTCIR-9 Workshop Meeting to be held in December 6-9, 2011 at NII (Tokyo).

It is time to call for NTCIR-10 task proposals. We are looking for proposals of evaluation tasks that can help advance our understanding of Information Access processes, technologies, and systems. In NTCIR-10, we are looking for two types of evaluation tasks: Core challenge tasks and Pilot tasks.

* Core Challenge Task: this is for benchmarking and assessment of solutions to a particular Information Access problem within one or two NTCIR cycles. It also aims to establish the best practices to address each of the problems. NTCIR-9 had four core tasks including INTENT (Diversity search), RITE (Text Entailment for QA), GeoTime (Spatial/Temporal IR), and SpokenDoc (IR for spoken documents).

* Pilot Task: this type is suitable for the first cycle of a new task where evaluation methodology needs to be developed. Or, a task can only looks at a component (i.e., MT) and apply it to an IA application in the next cycle (i.e., MT for IR). NTCIR-9 had three pilot tasks such as VisEx (Visualisation for Explorative Search), CrossLink (Cross-lingual Link Discovery), and PatentMT (Machine translation for patent documents).

NTCIR-10 Program Committee will carefully assess the proposals based on selection criteria given below. Please make sure to include sufficient information for the Committee to assess the proposals using the criteria. A seed funding will be available for the accepted evaluation tasks to cover some of the expenses (data collection purchase, relevance assessments, etc.). However, task organizers are encouraged to apply for external funding whenever appropriate, to make the resultant data publicly available, and to involve the participants or community in the data creation process.

Coordinating an evaluation task is a great way to create a new research area and establish an international community. We are looking for innovative and exciting ideas for the evaluation tasks in Information Access! Please send your proposal in PDF format to ntc-admin by Midnight of 25 November 2011 (JST) with the subject: NTCIR-10 Task Proposal. 

More details will soon be available on the NTCIR website .

Best regards,

Tetsuya Sakai and Hideo Joho

NTCIR Program Chairs

Noriko Kando, Tsuneaki Kato, and Eiichiro Sumita

NTCIR General Chairs

Call for Participation: NTCIR-9 final meeting

[English Message]

Apologies for multiple copies

*********************************************************************
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
NTCIR-9 Workshop Meeting
on Evaluation of Information Access Technologies:
IR, QA and Cross-lingual Information Access
December 6-9 2011
NII, Tokyo, Japan
http://research.nii.ac.jp/ntcir/ntcir-9/
EVIA 2011
http://research.nii.ac.jp/ntcir/evia2011/
*********************************************************************

The NTCIR-9 Workshop Meeting and the 4th International Workshop on
Evaluating Information Access (EVIA 2011) will be held on December 6-9,
2011, at NII in Tokyo, Japan. Anyone who is interested in research
areas related to NTCIR, such as Information Retrieval, Question
Answering, Information Extraction, Text Mining and Data Engineering,
Machine Translation, is welcome to attend and join the discussion.

The previous NTCIR Workshop Meeting, NTCIR-8, held in June 2010,
had a total of 180 attendees from 18 different countries
contributed to discussion and exchanging the experiences with one
another. Among them about half were researchers participated in
the "task(s) -- shared experiment task(s)" set by NTCIR, and others
contributed to fruitful discussion.

At NTCIR-9 Meeting, active information access (IA) researchers will get
together again and share their experiences, and discuss the future plan
and the roadmap for leveraging the IA research.

NTCIR-9 has hosted the following four core tasks and three pilot tasks,
under a new organization structure. Most tasks are new in NTCIR-9,
and we had one of the largest number of participated teams in the
history of NTCIR!

[Core Tasks]
* INTENT: Diversification of search results (+ 1CLICK subtask)
* RITE: Recognizing Inference in Text
* GeoTime: Document Retrieval for When and Where queries
* SpokenDoc: Information Retrieval for Spoken Documents

[Pilot Tasks]
* CrossLink: Cross-Lingual Link Discovery
* VisEx: Interactive Visual Exploratory
* PatentMT: Translation of Patent Documents

The overview and system papers will be presented at the Meeting
on DAY 2-4 (December 7-9).

Moreover, NTCIR-9 features exciting special talks, including latest
updates from other evaluation forums:

* TREC/TAC by Ian Soboroff (NIST)
* INEX by Andrew Trotman (University of Otago) and Shlomo Geva (QUT)
* MediaEval by Gareth Jones (Dublin City University)
* CLEF/FIRE (TBA)

The final program will be announced later.
　
The first day of the Meeting will have an Introduction to NTCIR followed
by EVIA 2011 (the Fourth International Workshop on Evaluating Information
Access).

Online registration is available at:

The full registration fee includes one copy of
the proceedings (CD-ROM), one buffet dinner, three lunches,
and coffees during the breaks.
http://research.nii.ac.jp/ntcir/ntcir-9/participation.html

If you are a student, attending workshop presentations can be free of charge,
but this does not include the proceedings, buffet, and lunch.
You can optionally purchase a buffet and/or lunch ticket.
If you would like a copy of the Proceedings, you need to register as
"Student with Proceedings".

Online proceedings will be available at the NTCIR Web site during
and after the Workshop Meeting.

Looking forward to seeing you in Tokyo.

Hideo Joho and Tetsuya Sakai
NTCIR-9 Program Co-Chairs

Noriko Kando, Tsuneaki Kato, and Eiichiro Sumita
NTCIR-9 General Co-Chairs

==========(Japanese message)======
* 重複して受け取られた方は、申し訳ありません。
* 関連のメーリングリストや周囲のご関心の方々にもご紹介ください。

[Japanese Message]

第9回NTCIRワークショップ（NTCIR-9）成果報告会および第4回情報アク
セスの評価に関する国際ワークショップ(EVIA2011)の参加案内をお送り
します。情報アクセス技術に関する研究分野（情報検索、自然言語処理、
データ工学など）にご関心がある方は、どなたでも歓迎いたします。奮
ってご参加ください。

日程: 2011年12月6日～9日
会場: 学術総合センター（神保町・竹橋）
http://research.nii.ac.jp/ntcir/ntcir-9/index-ja.html
EVIA 2011:http://research.nii.ac.jp/ntcir/evia2011/

NTCIRは、情報アクセス技術の研究促進を目的として、研究に必要不可欠な
大規模かつ再利用可能な実験用データセットを提供します。さらに、研究上
のアイディアや妥当な評価方法について議論できるフォーラムを提供します。
具体的には、複数の研究チームが共通の「研究課題（タスク）」を進める
ことで、協調と競争のバランスを保ちながら研究者コミュニティーの発展を
目指しています。

前回の成果報告会には、18カ国から180名以上の研究者が出席し、活発な議
論と意見交換の場を持ちました。出席者の約半数はNTCIRのタスク参加者、
残りの半数の方々も議論に大いに貢献してくださいました。今年も、多数の
世界で活躍する情報アクセス技術研究者が一同に会します。ぜひ、ご出席
の上、今後のさらなる研究発展に向けた議論に参加してください！

今回のNTCIR-9では、新しくなった運営体制のもと、４つのコアタスクと
３つのパイロットタスクを設定しました。ほとんどのタスクはNTCIR-9から
始まる新しいタスクで、参加チーム数もNTCIR-8から増加しています。

[コアタスク]
・クエリの意図解析によるDiversity Search (INTENT + 1CLICK サブタスク)
・テキスト間の推論認識と質問応答 (RITE)
・地理・時間情報の検索 (GeoTime)
・音声文書の検索 (SpokenDoc)

[パイロットタスク]
・対話的情報探索と可視化 (VisEx)
・言語横断リンク発見 (CrossLink)
・特許文書の翻訳 (PatentMT)

成果報告会の2日目から4日目（12月7-9日）に、各チームの研究成果や、比
較評価によって得られた知見が発表されます。

さらに、プログラムには世界中の評価フォーラムからの最新報告を含む
エキサイティングな招待講演を予定しています

・TREC/TAC by Ian Soboroff (NIST)
・INEX by Andrew Trotman (University of Otago) and Shlomo Geva (QUT)
・MediaEval by Gareth Jones (Dublin City University)
・CLEF/FIRE (TBA)

詳細は、おってご案内いたします。ご期待ください

初日（12月6日）には、情報アクセス技術評価に関する国際ワークショップ
（EVIA 2011）とNTCIRのイントロダクションが企画されています。
NTCIR-9の成果報告会に参加登録された方は、全ての企画に参加することができます。
参加費には予稿論文集、バンケット、昼食代が含まれています。
http://research.nii.ac.jp/ntcir/ntcir-9/participation.html

学生さんはワークショップの講演や発表に無料で参加可能です。
希望に合わせて、バンケットや昼食のチケットを購入いただけます。
予稿論文集をご希望の方は「Student with Proceedings」で登録してください。

皆様の参加を心よりお待ちしております。

NTCIR-9 プログラム委員長
酒井哲也
上保秀夫

NTCIR-9 実行委員長
加藤恒昭
神門典子
隅田英一郎
---

My important dates 2011-2012

Oct 6 GCOE talk at Hookaido U [Sapporo]
Oct 26 WSDM acceptance
Oct 23-27 CIKM [Glasgow]

Nov 01 WWW abstracts due
Nov 01 AIRS registration due
Nov 04 NTCIR-9 camera ready
Nov 07 WWW papers due

Dec 06-09 NTCIR-9 [Tokyo]
Dec 18-20 AIRS 2011 [Dubai]

Jan 15 ACL long paper deadline
Jan 30, 2012 WWW notification

Feb 06 SIGIR full paper abstracts due
Feb 08-12 WSDM 2012 [Seattle]
Feb 13 SIGIR full papers due
Feb 28 WWW camera-ready

Mar 05 SIGIR posters due
Mar 11 ACL long paper acceptance
Mar 18 ACL short paper deadline

Apr 16-20, 2012 WWW 2012 [Lyon]
Apr 23 ACL short paper acceptance
Apr 30 SIGIR paper/poster acceptance
Apr 30 ACL long paper camera ready

May 07 ACL short paper camera ready

Jul 9-12 ACL [Jeju]

Aug 12-16 SIGIR [Portland]

CFP: Search Intents and Diversification

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First Call for Papers:
Information Retrieval ( http://springer.com/10791 )
Special Issue on Search Intents and Diversification

Submissions due: Apr 2, 2012
Final accept/reject decisions: July 31, 2012
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MOTIVATION AND BACKGROUND

Information retrieval users have diverse search needs, and the
level of detail given in the user's search query can differ
widely depending on how clear the underlying information need
itself is, the user's search environment (e.g. input device),
and how difficult it is for the user to express the need in the
form of a query. For these reasons, many queries are ambiguous
and/or underspecified.

In light of this, research in accommodating different search
intents has received a lot of attention lately. For example,
major conferences like SIGIR, WWW and WSDM have begun to see
papers on search result diversification, which aims to capture
different user needs within one entry-point search result page.
This problem was discussed intensively at the ECIR 2011 Diversity
in Document Retrieval Workshop, and a follow-up workshop will
take place at WSDM 2012. Also, starting at TREC 2009,
the TREC Web and Blog tracks have measured the diversity of
participating systems in retrieving web pages and blog posts,
respectively. Moreover, the recent INTENT task at NTCIR-9
tackles not only search result diversification but also the
task of mining intents given a query.

As the third round of the TREC web diversity track and the first
round of the NTCIR INTENT task conclude toward the end of 2011,
we believe that the timing is right for a special issue on
search intents and diversification to be published in 2012, in
order to highlight the advances and clarify the future goals in
this area. We welcome relevant submissions from these evaluation
venues as well as from outside.

SCOPE

We encourage submissions that are related to one or more
of the following themes:

- Intent and diversity related tasks at TREC, NTCIR and other
IR evaluation venues
- Interpreting and mining search intents
- Handling navigational and informational search intents
- Handling ambiguity and multiple facets in queries
- Handling novelty/redundancy and diversity
- Building intent and diversity related test collections
- Diversification in non-traditional IR tasks,
e.g. aggregated search, exploratory search and session IR
- Interfaces for presenting diversified search results
- Evaluation methods for intent and diversity

IMPORTANT DATES

Apr 02, 2012 Submissions due
May 21, 2012 First-round reviews sent to authors
Jun 18, 2012 Revised manuscripts due
Jul 31, 2012 Final decisions sent to authors

SUBMISSIONS

Detailed instructions will be announced later this year.
Manuscripts must adhere to the format guidelines shown in the
"Instructions for Authors" page available from
http://springer.com/10791 .

GUEST EDITORS

Tetsuya Sakai tesakai

at microsoft.com

Noriko Kando kando

at nii.ac.jp

Craig Macdonald craig.macdonald

at glasgow.ac.uk

Ian Soboroff ian.soboroff

at nist.gov

Please contact the guest editors if you have any questions.

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE

Rakesh Agrawal, Microsoft Research
Javed Aslam, Northeastern University
Ben Carterette, University of Delaware
Olivier Chapelle, Yahoo! Labs
Charlie Clarke, University of Waterloo
Evangelos Kanoulas, University of Sheffield
Mounia Lalmas, Yahoo!
Hang Li, Microsoft
Iadh Ounis, University of Glasgow
Filip Radlinksi, Microsoft
Davood Rafiei, University of Alberta
Stephen Robertson, Microsoft
Ian Ruthven, University of Strathclyde
Rodrygo Santos, University of Glasgow
Jun Wang, University College London
William Webber, University of Melbourne
Emine Yilmaz, Microsoft,
ChengXiang Zhai, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Min Zhang, Tsinghua University