Call For Workshops

Call for Workshop Proposals

The annual SIGIR conference is the major international forum for the presentation of new research results, and the demonstration of new systems and techniques, in the broad field of information retrieval (IR). The 47th ACM SIGIR conference will be run in person in Washington D.C. from July 14th to 18th, 2024. SIGIR 2024 workshops will provide a platform for presenting novel ideas and emerging areas in IR, in a less formal and more focused way than the conference itself. Researchers and practitioners from all areas of IR are invited to submit workshop proposals for review.

2024 Format
Workshops will be on-site and in person. All workshops will require at least one organizer to attend, as well as a (yet-to-be-determined) number of participants.

Important Dates for Workshop Proposals

  • Time zone: Anywhere on Earth (AoE)
  • Proposal submission: January 10, 2024
  • Proposal acceptance notification: February 7, 2024
  • Individual workshop paper submission: April 25, 2024
  • Tentative workshop overview camera ready: April 26, 2024
  • Tentative workshop paper acceptance notification: May 23, 2024
  • Workshop day: July 18, 2024

Topics of Interest

Workshop topics typically match those identified in the SIGIR 2024 general call for contributions (see, e.g., full papers), but proposals concerned with other areas of IR are welcome. We encourage prospective workshop organizers to submit proposals for highly interactive workshops (either full-day or half-day) focusing on either in-depth analysis or broad-ranging approaches to information retrieval. The format of each workshop is to be determined by the organizers. We expect workshops to contain ample time for discussion and engagement of all participants – not just those presenting papers. Workshops that foster collaboration, discussion, group problem-solving and community building initiatives are particularly encouraged. Workshops that only revolve around the presentation of papers in a “mini conference” format are discouraged.

The organizers of approved workshops will be expected to define the workshop’s focus, gather and review submissions, and decide upon the final program content. Organizers (including co-organizers) are strongly encouraged to write an article for the ACM SIGIR Forum summarizing the event. At least one organizer is expected to attend the entire workshop.

Submission Guidelines

Workshop proposals, in no more than 4 pages, should include the following information:

  • Title
  • Motivation for the workshop, its appropriateness for SIGIR, its complementarity to the main SIGIR 2024 conference topics, and why it would be of interest to the IR community
  • Theme and purpose of the workshop
  • Format (half/full-day) and planned activities and a tentative schedule of events, including potential keynote or other speakers
  • For each organizer, how likely they think it is that they can attend onsite
  • Special requirements and how critical they are to the success of the workshop. Outline a contingency plan in case these requirements cannot be met, such as potential last-minute organizers to ensure the workshop runs onsite
  • List of organizers with a short biographical sketch of each organizer, describing relevant qualifications and experience
  • Names of potential program committee (PC) members – if the workshop requires a PC (any workshop involving written papers should have a PC)
  • Selection process for participants and/or presenters
  • Details of the expected target audience and how the workshop will be advertised to reach them
  • Related workshops (if applicable): if the workshop has been held previously at SIGIR or another conference, the organizers should indicate this and describe briefly past attendance and outcomes, and why another workshop is needed

Workshop proposals should be prepared in the current ACM two-column conference format. Suitable LaTeX, Word, and Overleaf templates are available from the ACM Website (use the “sigconf” proceedings template).

Workshop proposals will be reviewed based on the quality of the proposal, their complementarity to the main SIGIR 2024 conference topics, and the likelihood of attracting enough participants, as well as the hosting capacity of the venue. The submissions will be reviewed by a program committee selected for this purpose, and final decisions will be made at the SIGIR Program Committee meeting.

Proposals should be submitted in PDF through the EasyChair system (workshop track): https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sigir24.

The organizers of accepted workshops will be invited to submit a camera-ready summary of the workshop, to be included in the SIGIR 2024 conference proceedings.

Workshop Chairs
Zhuyun Dai, Google
Hussein Suleman, University of Cape Town
Andrew Trotman, University of Otago

Contact
For further information, please contact the SIGIR 2024 Workshop Co-chairs by email: sigir24-workshops@easychair.org.