Call for papers: 

Journal of Information Retrieval
Special Topic Issue on Contextual Information Retrieval    
http://www.cis.strath.ac.uk/~ir/jir/

Guest editors: Fabio Crestani and Ian Ruthven, University of Strathclyde,
Glasgow, UK.

Introduction

Context affects all areas of Information Retrieval. A searcher's context
affects how they interact with a retrieval system and how they make
decisions about the objects they retrieve. A system's context affects how
searchable objects are created, selected and linked within an information
resource and context influences how we evaluate retrieval systems.
Importantly, context also affects how we design and construct retrieval
systems.

The ability to respond to context could allow retrieval systems to learn and
predict what information a searcher needs, decide how and when this
information should be presented and distinguish between different search
goals and searcher preferences. How the designers of search systems should
respond to context is an important issue for the development of retrieval
systems and the appropriate use of context raises many research questions.
For example, what aspects of a searcher's context can we recognise, how
should context be utilised within a retrieval system to improve search
performance, how can we exploit shared contexts and contexts over time, and
how should we evaluate contextual IR systems?

This special topic issue of the Journal of Information Retrieval will
address the role of context in the theory and practice of IR systems
development. We concentrate specifically on contextual IR systems as opposed
to contextual IR in general as the user side of context has been more
heavily investigated. The area of contextual IR systems, on the other hand,
is one where only recently are we starting to see real progress and where a
dedicated issue can help form developments in a fast-moving area of IR.

The special topic issue welcomes high-quality manuscripts on the development
and evaluation of contextual information retrieval. In line with the
editorial policy of the Journal of Information Retrieval we expect that all
submissions would contain an appropriate evaluation component. Submissions
to the special issue should not be under consideration in any other journal
or conference and will evaluated according to the Journal of Information
Retrieval reviewing criteria and appropriateness to the Special Topic issue.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited, to:

    * theories and models of contextual IR
    * detection of contextual features
    * approaches to reasoning about context
    * algorithms for contextual IR
    * context in multi-media, multi-lingual or multi-modal applications
    * architectures for contextual information access
    * case studies of context in action
    * personalised vs collaborative context
    * context sensitive interaction
    * contextualised interfaces
    * evaluations of context-sensitive applications
    * context and dynamic retrieval

Submissions should use the Journal of Information Retrieval style templates
available from the Journal's homepage and should be submitted through the
JIR online submission page selecting the Contextual Information Retrieval
special issue article type. All details regarding the special topic issue
are available at http://www.cis.strath.ac.uk/~ir/jir/

Important dates
Submission of articles: Tue 31st January 2006
Notification to authors: Friday 31st March 2006
Final version of accepted papers: Wed 31st May 2006

All questions regarding submissions should be directed to the special topic
issue Guest Editors: Fabio Crestani and Ian Ruthven (fabioc, ir at
cis.strath.ac.uk)