SIGIR 2016

International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval

Preliminary Call for Demonstrations

SIGIR is the major international forum for the presentation of new research results and for the demonstration of new systems and techniques for Information Retrieval (IR). SIGIR 2016 will be held in Pisa, Italy on 17-21 August 2016 (http://sigir.org/sigir2016). The Conference and Program Chairs invite all those working in areas related to IR to submit original proposals for demonstrations. Demonstrations present first-hand experience with research prototypes or operational systems. They provide opportunities to exchange ideas gained from implementing IR systems, and to obtain feedback from expert users. Accepted demonstration submissions will appear in the conference proceedings.

What makes a good demo?

A good demonstration submission is interesting to a SIGIR audience and both describes and shows a novel solution to a problem. The demonstration submission should address the following questions: What problem does my system solve? Who are my target users? How do my demonstration solve the problem? What does my demonstration do and how does it work? How does it compare with existing systems? Finally, how and when will my technology have an impact? Demonstration submissions are welcome in any of the areas related to aspects of Information Retrieval (IR), as identified in the call for papers on the SIGIR website.

As an experiment for SIGIR 2016, it is our intention to elevate the “substance” of a demonstration paper to be on par with that of a short paper, and hence have increased page limits to 4. We hope that this increases the recognition for building innovative working systems within our community and encourages the creation of usable artifacts that highlight cutting-edge research.

Submission guidelines

Submissions of demonstration papers must be in English and should not exceed 5 pages in SIGIR format (including references and figures). 4 pages are allowed to address the questions above. A further 1 page, which will not be published in the SIGIR proceedings, may be used to describe demo requirements. Wireless network access, along with a table and poster mount backdrop, will be provided for all accepted demonstrations. We cannot guarantee that additional requests will be met. Suitable LaTeX and Word templates for SIGIR are available from the ACM Website (for LaTeX, use Option 2). It is the responsibility of the authors to ensure that the PDF submission has been uploaded successfully. We suggest downloading the PDF after submission to check it is ok.

Papers should be submitted electronically via the conference submission system. At least one author of each accepted demonstration must register and attend the conference.

Unlike short and full-paper submissions, authors of demonstration submissions are not expected to take measures to conceal their identity from reviewers. Submissions that are over the 5-page limit (4 page description, 1 page requirements) and incomplete submissions will be rejected without review.

Important Dates

February 11, 2016 Demonstration proposals due
March 31, 2016 Demonstrations notification

Demo Chairs

Jimmy Lin (University of Waterloo, Canada)
Craig Macdonald (University of Glasgow, UK)

email: sigir2016-demochairs [AT] isti.cnr.it