BID to HOST ICTIR

*BID*

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*to host*

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*THE 2^ND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE THEORY OF INFORMATION RETRIEVAL*

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*I C T I R***

 

 

 


    Purpose

It is commonly agreed that the term 'information retrieval' (IR) refers 
to fetching information relevant to users' information needs from 
recorded ¾ using primarily, albeit not exclusively, (generally 
networked) computer systems ¾ information. As such, IR has by now proved 
to stretch beyond information and computer sciences, reaching 
mathematics and linguistics, tackling and challenging new areas like 
physics, philosophy, sociology, or biology.

It is the goal of ICTIR to be a forum that reflects just this new, 
multi-valued meaning of IR theory, in general, in terms of new and 
original results.

The purpose of ICTIR is to present, discuss, analyze and integrate new 
theoretical results in IR, including the traditional and already 
well-established fields and approaches in IR, but also welcoming new 
approaches coming from, e.g., mathematics, physics, linguistics, 
biology, philosophy, and other areas. Experimental and/or practical 
results from new paradigms will be considered as well.


    History

It is widely accepted that a theory is a logically self-consistent 
framework for describing the behavior of a related set of natural or 
social phenomena. A theory often takes the form of a mathematical 
framework, which is derived from a small set of basic principles, and 
which is capable of explaining observations, and of producing 
experimental predictions.


     


    In Information Retrieval, a huge body of experimental results has
    been accumulated over the last four-five decades. Albeit in the last
    years efforts were done to elaborate mathematically based theories
    for some IR areas, yet a comforting explanation and understanding,
    at a conceptual/theoretical level, of many practical observations
    and experimental results are still missing.


     


    ICTIR stems from the above, and grew out of the ACM SIGIR MF/IR
    Workshop series (Greece, 2000; U.S.A., 2001, Finland, 2002; Canada,
    2003; U.K., 2004; Brazil, 2005) as well as the IR Theory Workshop
    (U.K., 2005), and materialized in the 1^st ICTIR in 2007 (Hungary,
    http://www.infota.org/ictir2007). Looking back to all these events,
    taking into account feedbacks received, and due to prominent,
    active, and enthusiastic researchers who took part in them over the
    years, it may be said that they were very successful.


    Proposal to Host ICTIR


     


    Guidelines for a bid are as follows:


     


    ·        location (accessibility, air, rail, road links)


    ·        venue (conference facility, multi-session, parallel
    sessions, breaks, lunch),


    ·        length, programme (preferably three days, schedule for
    presentations, programme, opening and closing sessions)


    ·        timing (the 1^st ICTIR was held in October, most important:
    timing should not conflict with other major events; recommended date
    2009)


    ·        social/cultural events (conference dinner, networking,
    sightseeing, excursions, reasonable costs)


    ·        registration (easy to use, online/card payment)


    ·        catering (on site/near lunch to maximize interaction
    between participants, dietary requirements)


    ·        accommodation (suitable rooms of different categories)


    ·        special conditions (give access to participants with
    special needs, e.g., motion disability)


    ·        conference Web site


    ·        proposer (brief description and track record, it is
    preferable that the proposer have prior experience in organizing
    international scientific conferences)


    ·        budget, costing (ICTIR is an independent event, the 1^st
    ICTIR ran on self-budget)


    ·        sponsors


    ·        support of host institution


    ·        promotion (draft programme, advertising plans)


    ·        schedule of activities


    ·       call for papers (excerpt from the call for the 1^st ICTIR as
    a sample:

High-quality and original research papers that have not been previously 
published and are not under review for another conference or journal are 
expected. All submissions will be reviewed for originality, quality as 
well as overall contribution to IR.

·         Foundations

·         Models

·         Formal techniques

·         Structures

·         Evaluation

·         User issues

·         New approaches

·         Information, meaning, content, entropy

·         Links to other disciplines

·         Web Retrieval

·         Topology

·         Mathematics of IR

·         Algorithms, complexity

·         Computing (quantum, grid)

·         Physics of IR

·         Philosophy of IR

·         Sociology of IR

·         Pedagogy of IR

·         Linguistics of IR

·         Filtering

·         Mining

·         Indexing

·         Hypermedia

·         Visualisation

·         Digital Libraries

·         Semantic Web, Ontologies


     


    ·        arrangements for a programme committee


    ·        submission, reviewing, acceptance, paper preparation process


    ·        proceedings (arrangement/plans for a possibly proper
    publication, the proceedings of the 1^st ICTIR is a special topic
    issue of an international journal having an ISSN number)


    ·        any other notes or matter.


     


    Filing the Bid


     


    The bid should be sent via email to Sándor Dominich, ICTIR General
    Chair,  ([email protected]), with CC to Keith van Rijsbergen,
    ICTIR Honorary Chair, ([email protected]) by the end of February 2008.