Call for bids to host the ACM SIGIR International Conference on the Theory of Information Retrieval (ICTIR) in 2017 and 2018: http://sigir.org/general-information/hosting-ictir/
The International Conference on the Theory of Information Retrieval (ICTIR) provides a forum for the presentation and discussion of research related to the foundational aspects of Information Retrieval (IR), including, for example, new or improved models of relevance, ranking, representation, information needs, and evaluation. The need for formal frameworks is universal across the many applications of information retrieval. In addition to the established approaches in IR, the conference encourages the submission of papers that are attempting to define new tasks, develop new search paradigms, or apply methods from related disciplines, such as natural language processing, machine learning, statistics, or quantum mechanics. Large-scale experimental studies are not required for ICTIR papers, although solid evidence (theoretical or empirical) in support of new theories is expected.
ICTIR grew from a series of SIGIR workshops on mathematical and formal methods for IR held during the years 2000 to 2005 and organized by Sándor Dominich, Keith van Rijsbergen, Mounia Lalmas, and Iadh Ounis.
In 2007, ICTIR became a full conference founded by Keith and Sándor. Since then, ICTIR has been held biennially in 2007 (Budapest, Hungary), 2009 (Cambridge, UK), 2011 (Bertinoro, Italy) and 2013 (Copenhagen, Denmark). ICTIR has been supported by the BCS-IRSG.
In 2014 ICTIR became a fully-sponsored ACM conference with BCS-IRSG maintaining its support. Starting in 2015, ICTIR will be held annually. In September 2015, ICTIR will be hosted by the Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval which is in the School of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. See http://ictir2015.org/ for details. The conference chairs for ICTIR 2015 are James Allan and Bruce Croft. In September 2016, ICTIR will be hosted by the University of Delaware. The conference chairs for ICTIR 2016 are Ben Carterette and Hui Fang.
We are now soliciting bids for organizing ICTIR 2017 and ICTIR 2018. The preferred location for ICTIR 2017 is Europe. The conference is expected to be four or five days long: a day for tutorials, three days for the main conference, and an optional day for workshops.
The bidding process is based on two important steps. The first step, which is optional yet recommended, is a short presentation of an informal bid at the business meeting of ICTIR 2015. Those interested in presenting an informal bid, please inform Oren Kurland
(kurland@ie.technion.ac.il) before the conference.
The second step is the formal bid (mandatory). Deadline: **Midnight UTC Monday, November 9th, 2015**. Details with regard to the formal bid are provided at http://sigir.org/general-information/hosting-ictir/.
Notifications will be sent out by Monday, December 7th, 2015. Formal bids should be emailed to Oren Kurland (kurland@ie.technion.ac.il).
We will be happy to answer any questions with regard to potential bids.
Important Dates
Presentation of informal bids (optional): At the business meeting at ICTIR 2015. Please notify us before the conference if you intend to present.
Formal bids: Midnight UTC Monday, November 9th, 2015.
Notifications: Monday, December 7th, 2015.
ICTIR Steering Committee
Leif Azzopardi
Peter Bruza
Susan Dumais
Jaap Kamps (SIGIR representative)
Oren Kurland (chair)
Birger Larsen
Donald Metzler
Stefan Rueger (BCS-IRSG representative)
ICTIR Honorary Chair: Keith van Rijsbergen