SIGIR 2007 Workshop on Focused Retrieval (Question Answering, Passage
Retrieval, Element Retrieval)

WEBSITE: http://www.cs.otago.ac.nz/sigirfocus/
FULL CALL: http://www.cs.otago.ac.nz/sigirfocus/call.html

MOTIVATION
Standard document retrieval finds atomic documents, and leaves it to the
end-user to then locate the relevant information inside the document.
Focused retrieval, in a broad sense, tries to remove the onus on the
end-user, by providing more direct access to relevant information. That is,
focused retrieval is addressing information retrieval proper. Focused
retrieval is becoming increasingly important in all areas of information
retrieval. Question Answering has been examined by TREC, CLEF, and NTCIR for
many years, and is arguably the ultimate goal of semantic web research for
interrogative information needs. Passage retrieval has an even longer
history and is currently examined by the genomics track at TREC, but is also
important when searching long documents of any kind. Element retrieval
(XML-IR) has been examined by INEX where it has been used to extract
relevant sections from academic documents, the application to text book
searching is obvious and such commercial systems already exist.

Although on initial inspection these focused retrieval paradigms appear
quite different, they share much in common. As with traditional
document-centric information retrieval, the user need is loose, linguistic
variations are frequent, and answers are a ranked list of relevant results.
Furthermore in focused retrieval, the size of the unit of information
retrieved is variable and results within a single document may naturally
overlap. These issues are unique to focused retrieval, and to date have not
been examined as general problems. For example, the metrics used for passage
retrieval at TREC and those for XML-IR at INEX were developed independently
even though they arguably measure the same thing: an XML element is a
passage.

This workshop will not address topics covered by the annual evaluation
forums (TREC, CLEF, NTCIR and INEX). They examine the evaluation of systems
against predefined performance criteria. This SIGIR workshop will focus on
theory, methodology, and practive of focused retrieval, independent of the
evaluation forums specifics.

This SIGIR workshop will provide an opportunity for IR researchers who have
been working in different areas of focused retrieval to collaborate and to
share ideas. It will also be ideal forum for those who may not be aware of
work or progress in the field but wish to collaborate. It also will allow
researchers who have researched the field to participate and exchange ideas
and experience with the research community.

ORGANIZERS
Andrew Trotman (University of Otago)
Shlomo Geva (Queensland University of Technology)
Jaap Kamps (University of Amsterdam)

PROGRAM COMMITTEE
James Allan (University of Massachusetts)
Charles Clarke (University of Waterloo)
Shlomo Geva (Queensland University of Technology)
Dave Hawking (CSIRO)
Jaap Kamps (University of Amsterdam)
Mounia Lalmas (Queen Mary, University of London)
Christof Monz (Queen Mary, University of London)
Maarten de Rijke (University of Amsterdam)
Andrew Trotman (University of Otago)
Ellen Voorhees (NIST)

SCHEDULE
June 11, 2007 Deadline for Submissions (see the web site for instrucions)
June 18, 2007 Notification of Acceptance
June 25, 2007 Proceedings Published
July 27, 2007 SIGIR 2007 Workshop on Focused Retrieval

FURTHER INFORMATION
http://www.cs.otago.ac.nz/sigirfocus/