Workshop on Collaborative Information Retrieval (CIR 2011)

Workshop on Collaborative Information Retrieval (CIR 2011)
CIKM’2011, Glasgow, UK, October 28th.
http://cir2011.fxpal.com/

Organizers
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– Gene Golovchinsky, FX Palo Alto Laboratory, Inc, USA.
– Jeremy Pickens, Catalyst Repository Systems, USA.
– Meredith Ringel Morris, Microsoft Research, USA.
– Juan M. Fernández-Luna, University of Granada, Spain.
– Juan F. Huete, University of Granada, Spain.
– Julio C. Rodríguez-Cano, University of Informatics Science, Cuba.

Introduction and Goal
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This is the third workshop we are organizing on the topic of collaborative information retrieval. The first workshop, held in conjunction with JCDL 2008, focused on broad topics and sought to establish a vocabulary for discussion about collaborative information seeking, to identify work practices and disciplines that might benefit from collaborative information seeking, and to establish a community of researchers with related interests. The second workshop, held in conjunction with CSCW 2010, built on the previous results, and focused on issues of communication and awareness in support of collaborative information seeking.

Our goal in this third workshop is to focus on algorithmic and other software issues related to information seeking in a collaborative setting. We would like to explore a variety of algorithms for mediating collaboration, and also to examine how different user interface elements can be used to support associated activity. Algorithmic aspects will include the coordination of input from multiple people, fusion and distribution of search results, and modifications to ranking algorithms based on group-specific information. Interface aspects will include support for awareness of individual and of group activity, role-specific interfaces, support for communication among collaborators, and support for transparency of search algorithms to foster a better understanding of the search space. It is also important to consider the effect that the starting context (e.g., IM chat, discussions in a social network, transitions from single-user to collaborative search, etc.) has on the algorithms and on the UI.

For more information, please see the Call For Papers at http://cir2011.fxpal.com/, which also includes a Demo session during which participants are encouraged to demonstrate interactive collaborative information seeking systems.

Call for Papers
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Support for explicit collaboration is an essential part of many information seeking activities. Explicit collaboration differs from recommendation systems and collaborative filtering in that the people engaged in information seeking have an explicitly shared information need. Hence, rather than inferring similarities of intent, the system is free to mediate the sharing of knowledge and division of labor. In the last few years, several research groups have pursued various issues related to collaboration during search, including support for awareness, algorithmic mediation, conceptual and software frameworks for collaboration, and collaboration through a range of different devices.

Explicit collaboration implies a certain emphasis on interaction. The system has to not only communicate search results to the user, but also mediate communication and data sharing among its users. There are new algorithms that need to be invented that use inputs from multiple people to produce search results, and new evaluation metrics need to be invented that reflect the collaborative and interactive nature of the task. Finally, we need to integrate the expertise of library and information science researchers and practitioners by revisiting real-world information seeking situations with an eye for shared information needs and explicit collaborative search.

We are looking for several kinds of submissions for the workshop.

– Position/work in progress papers, four to six pages in length in the standard ACM format, the describe work related to collaborative information seeking. Papers will be reviewed and a few will be selected for presentation; the rest will be invited to submit a poster instead. The submission date for papers is June 29th.

– Posters will present late-breaking or just-starting work in the area. Poster submissions should be two to four pages in the standard ACM format. The workshop schedule will include time to view and discuss posters. The submission date for posters is June 29th.

– Demos will show working systems that support collaborative search or other information seeking activities. Each accepted demo will include a plenary presentation slot of 15-20 minutes, during which significant aspects of the system can be described and demonstrated. We will also set aside time for a session (analogous to the poster session) during which participants could interact with the demo presenters and their systems. Those interested in participating in the demo track should submit a two to four page paper in the standard ACM format that will describe key aspects of the system and how it supports various aspects of collaborative search. These papers are also due on June 29th. In addition, because system building is sometimes unpredictable in the amount of time involved, to help us plan the schedule, we would like to receive an interim progress report from those intending to participate in the demo track some time in early September. Such a report should consist of a series of screenshots or a video screen-cast (or even a link to a working online system!). We’ll settle on an exact date once we see how many participants we have in this track. Demo acceptances are contingent on having a viable system available in time for the workshop; if participants are unable to get a system ready in time for the workshop, we will reclassify the submission as a Poster.

Important Dates
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– Submission date: June 29, 2011
– Notification of acceptance: July 29, 2011
– Revised papers due: August 12, 2011
– Conference dates: 24-28, 2011
– Workshop Date: October 28, 2011

Submission Procedure
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Submissions to the workshop will be handled through the EasyChair site. Please log into EasyChair from the following URL http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cir20110 to submit papers. Please note the trailing 0 on the URL!

For further questions
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Please contact the organizers with any questions about the workshop. You can follow the workshop on Twitter with the #cir2011 hashtag.

 

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