[Asis-l] Journal of Information Retrieval Special Issue on Contextual Information Retrieval

[Ian Ruthven]

[Apologies if you receive multiple copies of this call]

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.

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. Context affects how 
searchable objects are created, selected and linked within an 
information resource and context influences how we evaluate retrieval 
systems. Importantly, it 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 information seeking 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)

Best wishes

Ian Ruthven
-- 
Ian Ruthven
Department of Computer and Information Sciences
University of Strathclyde
Glasgow G1 1XH
Email: Ian.Ruthven at cis.strath.ac.uk
Tel: +44 141 548 3098
Fax: +44 141 548 4523
http://www.cis.strath.ac.uk/~ir
Information Interaction in Context (IIiX) - http://www.db.dk/IIiX/