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Call for Papers

Please view the PDF version of the call for papers here.

Submission of Papers to SIGIR 2001

The Annual ACM SIGIR Conference is the major international forum for the presentation of new research results, and for the demonstration of new systems and techniques, in information retrieval. The SIGIR conference attracts a broad range of professionals including theoreticians, publishers, researchers, educators, and designers and developers of systems, interfaces, information bases, and related applications. Submissions to SIGIR can be research papers, proposals for demonstrations, tutorials, or workshops. All submissions must be in English and each submission type has different submission criteria. 

Instructions for Submitting Research Papers

General

Research papers submitted to SIGIR must consist of original contributions (that is, not previously published and not currently being considered for publication elsewhere) and must contain a clear statement of the problem addressed and the context in which it arises. Papers must also contain appropriate references to prior work and must indicate what contribution the work makes to the primary field of Information Retrieval. We encourage discussions of experimental studies, tests of usability, explorations of IR behavior, reports on the performance of large scale systems, and demonstrations of advanced approaches. Papers must be submitted electronically, via the submission web page [pointer]. We can accept papers in either PDF or Postscript. It is the responsibility of authors to ensure that their papers use no unusual format features and are printable on a standard Postscript printer. PDF or Postscript submissions must arrive by 29 January 2001.Hardcopy or electronic copy in other formats will only be accepted in exceptional circumstances.

Content guidelines

Although SIGIR has a long tradition of accepting quantitative, empirical studies of algorithms and systems, papers that focus on methodological issues, theoretical questions, system design and implementation, and other aspects of information retrieval are also welcome. In the case of empirical studies, papers should justify the data collection and analysis methods, should use appropriate statistical methods, and should indicate the significance of the conclusions for practice or research in Information Retrieval. Methodology papers should describe a novel method for the design or evaluation of an Information Retrieval system. The method might be intended for use in research or system development, but in either case methodology papers must indicate the utility of the method to those working in the field of Information Retrieval. Theory papers should describe principles, concepts or models on which work in Information Retrieval could be based. Theory papers must relate the proposed ideas to the existing literature in Information Retrieval and show how the proposed ideas enhance understanding of the core problems in Information Retrieval. Systems papers should describe the software and technology associated with a system for Information Retrieval. Systems papers must indicate to what extent the system has been implemented and evaluated, and should clearly describe how the systems architecture and behavior support novel ways for users to access stored information. All papers will be reviewed with respect to overall quality of presentation, and potential for future impact on the field of Information Retrieval.

Format

LaTeX and Word templates for SIGIR submissions are available from http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html. The first page must contain the title of the paper, an abstract of not more than 150 words, and up to 2 topic areas [pointer to topic web page]. No page in the paper, including the first page, should identify the authors or their affiliations. (The purpose of omitting author names and affiliations is to facilitate blind reviewing.) Where it is reasonable to do so, authors should conceal their identity, by, for example omitting acknowledgements in the submitted version of the paper, and refraining from phrases such as "In our earlier work [cite author-name]". Authors are of course free to cite their work when required but should attempt to not make it too obvious that the cited work is their own. Papers should contain at most 5000 words, should have wide margins, and font sizes must be 10 point or greater. The final version of the paper will have to fit within 8 double-column pages in the standard SIGIR format, including all figures and bibliography, so plan accordingly. Papers that are clearly longer than the limit of 5,000 words will be rejected immediately. All correspondence with authors will be through email. 

Student papers

Authors whose papers are eligible and wish to be considered for the Best Student Paper Award must state their eligibility on the submission page. This Award requires that the first and primary author be a student at time of submission, that he or she is responsible for much of the work, and that he or she will present the paper should it be accepted.

Reviewing process

Each paper will be allocated to one of the area coordinators and to three program committee members. Each area coordinator consolidates the PC-member reviews for their papers and attends the program committee meeting.

Mentoring

Researchers new to the field of IR should ensure that they are familiar with the work and style of publications in the area, including previous SIGIR conferences, ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS), the Journal of the American Society for Information Science (JASIS), the Journal of Information Processing and Management, the ACM Digital Libraries conference, and so on. 

Mentoring Program

As part of our efforts to broaden participation, SIGIR 2001 will feature a mentoring program to assist authors with their submissions to the conference. Authors who have not previously had a full length paper accepted to SIGIR, and who are unsure about how to best prepare a paper for the SIGIR audience, will be able to request feedback on their work from an experienced SIGIR author in advance of the submission deadline. For details, contact the Mentoring Chair, David Lewis (ddlewis2@worldnet.att.net) [see conference committee].