A pioneer of information retrieval, the computer science sub-discipline that also underpins the technology of modern Web search engines, Karen Sp\u00e4rck Jones was a British professor of Computers and Information at the University of Cambridge in Cambridge. Her contributions to the fields of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Information Retrieval (IR), especially with regard to experimentation, have been outstanding, highly influential and lasting, and include the introduction of Inverse Document Frequency for relevance ranking. Her achievements resulted in her receiving a number of prestigious accolades such as the BCS Lovelace medal for her advancement in Information Systems, and the ACM Salton Award for her significant, sustained and continuing contributions to research in information retrieval. Karen was also an outspoken advocate for women in computing, and we encourage former advisors of talented scientists to provide the judges with a rich and diverse candidate pool to select from.<\/p>\n
In order to honour Karen’s achievements, the BCS Information Retrieval Specialist Group (BCS IRSG) in conjunction with the BCS has established an annual award to encourage and promote talented researchers who have endeavoured to advance our understanding of Natural Language Processing or Information Retrieval with significant experimental contributions.<\/p>\n
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To learn more about Karen and her work, visit: To celebrate the commemorative event, the recipient of the award will be invited to present a keynote lecture at BCS IRSG\u2019s annual conference \u2014 the European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR) or at BCS IRSG\u2019s partner conference \u2014 the Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL). The recipient of the 2023 award will be giving a keynote lecture at EACL 2024 at the Hotel Radisson Blu, St. Julians, in Malta, from 17 to 22 of March 2024. These forums provide excellent venues to present and announce the award because the conferences attract many new and young IR and NLP researchers.<\/p>\n Eligibility. Open to all IR\/NLP researchers who have no more than 10 years\u2019 experience after their Ph.D. at the closing date for nominations (non-research times, e.g. parental leave or career breaks, will be taken into account to ensure equity; please point at such times in the nominee’s CVs).<\/p>\n Criterion. The candidate ought to have substantially advanced our understanding of IR or NLP or both through experimentation.<\/p>\n Nominations. The following should be provided: Nominations should be emailed to the panel chair below.\u00a0 The support letters can be emailed separately by the referees.\u00a0 It is possible for individuals to nominate themselves, in which case they should provide three support letters.\u00a0 Please note that we anticipate that people who provide support letters will do so only for a single candidate.<\/p>\n Award Panel. Successful candidates will be selected by an award panel. The Award Panel Chair, appointed by the BCS IRSG Committee, will invite panel members from amongst representatives of the BCS main council, the BCS IRSG Committee, the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL), the Award-sponsoring organisation (unless there could be a conflict of interest), as well as seasoned experts in IR and NLP from academia and industry.<\/p>\n Prize. The recipient of the award will receive a certificate, a trophy, a cash prize of \u00a31000 plus expenses for the awardee to travel to EACL 2024.<\/p>\n Note that the Karen Sp\u00e4rck Jones Award will now alternate between ECIR and EACL to promote integration between the IR and NLP communities that Karen Sp\u00e4rck Jones was an active member of. The 2023 prize award lecture will take place at EACL 2024.<\/p>\n Timeline for the 2023 Award: The Karen Sp\u00e4rck Jones Award is sponsored by Microsoft Research Cambridge and BCS; we would like to thank our generous sponsors.<\/p>\n Current Award Panel Chair: Dr Haiming Liu\u00a0h.liu@soton.ac.uk<\/a><\/p>\n For a list of previous recipients of the award, cf. <https:\/\/www.bcs.org\/membership-and-registrations\/member-communities\/information-retrieval-specialist-group\/awards\/<\/a>>.<\/p>\n Haiming Liu<\/p>\n KSJ Award Panel Chair of the BCS IRSG Committee<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A pioneer of information retrieval, the computer science sub-discipline that also underpins the technology of modern Web search engines, Karen Sp\u00e4rck Jones was a British professor of Computers and Information at the University of Cambridge in Cambridge. Her contributions to the fields of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Information Retrieval (IR), especially with regard to… Continue reading KSJ Awards 2023 nominations<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,193],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autumn-2023","category-awards","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive-irsg.bcs.org\/informer\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive-irsg.bcs.org\/informer\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive-irsg.bcs.org\/informer\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive-irsg.bcs.org\/informer\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive-irsg.bcs.org\/informer\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive-irsg.bcs.org\/informer\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7994\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive-irsg.bcs.org\/informer\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive-irsg.bcs.org\/informer\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive-irsg.bcs.org\/informer\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n*\u00a0https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Karen_Sp%C3%A4rck_Jones<\/a>
\n*\u00a0https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=U8FecRxSiUM<\/a>
\n*\u00a0https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=5fYeKiebpuo<\/a><\/p>\n
\n\u2022 Name of nominee, position, affiliation, years since completion of the Ph.D.;
\n\u2022 Name of person proposing the nominee, position, and affiliation;
\n\u2022 Short case for the award, not to exceed 2,500 words, highlighting the contributions the individual has made;
\n\u2022 List of the individual’s top five publications reflecting the relevant contributions, and role within these; and
\n\u2022 Exactly two supporting letters from people who would like to encourage\/support the nomination.<\/p>\n
\n\u2022 10 Nov 2023 \u2014 Closing date for nominations;
\n\u2022 17 Nov 2023 \u2013 Deadline for support letters;
\n\u2022 15 Dec 2023 \u2014 Notification of the prize recipient;
\n\u2022 17-22 March 2024 \u2014 Recipient presents keynote at EACL 2024 in Malta.<\/p>\n