[Asis-l] CFP CIKM'12 WS on Exploiting Semantic Annotations: Deadline July 27

[Jaap Kamps]

Fifth Workshop on
Exploiting Semantic Annotations for Information Retrieval (ESAIR'12)

CIKM 2012, November 2, Maui, Hawaii
http://staff.science.uva.nl/~kamps/esair12/

Submissions due: July 27 (any time zone!)

* Updates:
- Deadline extended to July 27 -- last chance to write your 2 pages!
- Generous sponsoring from EU FP7 Parlance project.
- Planning an exceptional beach BBQ after the workshop -- don't miss this!

* Final Call for Papers

There is an increasing amount of structure on the Web as a result of 
modern Web languages, micro-formats and linked data, user tagging and 
annotation, and emerging robust NLP tools.  These meaningful, semantic, 
annotations hold the promise to significantly enhance information 
access, by enhancing the depth of analysis of today's systems. 
Currently, we have only started exploring the possibilities and only 
begin to understand how these valuable semantic cues can be put to 
fruitful use.  To complicate matters, standard text search excels at 
shallow information needs expressed by short keyword queries, and here 
semantic annotation contributes very little, if anything.

The main questions for the workshop are how to leverage the rich context 
currently available, especially in a mobile search scenario, giving 
powerful new handles to exploit semantic annotations.  And how can we 
fruitfully combine information retrieval and semantic web approaches, 
and for the first time work actively toward a unified view on exploiting 
semantic annotations.

* Many Open Questions

The Workshop will bring together researchers working with semantic 
annotations, its use cases, its sources (authoring to NLP tools), its 
users, and its use in DB, IR, KM, or Web research, and work together on 
a range of open questions:

- Application/Use Case: What are use cases that make obvious the need 
for semantic annotation of information?  What tasks cannot be solved by 
document retrieval using the traditional bag-of-words?  What is keeping 
searchers from exploring these powerful search request?

- Annotations: What types of annotation are available?  Are there 
crucial differences between author-, software-, user- , and 
machine-generated annotations?  How similar or different are linked data 
and annotated text?  What is impact of the web of data with more and 
more information in preprocessed form?

- Rich Context:  Besides personalization and geo-positional information, 
mobiles have a wide and growing range of locational, mechanical and even 
biometrical sensor data available to them.  Can kick-start the query by 
inferring task and situational context in the mobile use case?

- (Un)certainty: How should we interpret the annotations?  Can expect a 
messy world to be captured in a clean set of meaningful categories?  Or 
is all information fundamentally uncertain and only partly known?  How 
can we fruitfully combine information retrieval and semantic web approaches?

These and other related questions will be discussed at this open format 
workshop -- the aim is to provide paths for further research to change 
the way we understand information access today!

* We Need Your Help!

Help us shape the future of information access by increasing the depth 
of analysis of today's systems:

- Submit a short 2-page research or position paper explaining your key 
wishes or key points,

- and take actively part in the discussion at the Workshop.

The deadline is Friday July 27, 2012, further submission details are on 
http://staff.science.uva.nl/~kamps/esair12/

We are looking forward to a productive, stimulating and fruitful 
workshop day in the tradition of previous ESAIR workshops -- come join 
the discussion!

Jaap Kamps, University of Amsterdam
Jussi Karlgren, Gavagai Stockholm
Peter Mika, Yahoo! Research, Barcelona
Vanessa Murdock, Bing