[Sigdl-l] Call for Bids to Host CLEF 2018

[Nicola Ferro]

INTRODUCTION

The CLEF Initiative (Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum) is a self-organized body whose main mission is to promote research, innovation, and development of information access systems with an emphasis on multilingual and multimodal information with various levels of structure.

The CLEF Initiative is structured in two main parts:
- a series of Evaluation Labs, i.e. laboratories to conduct evaluation of information access systems and workshops to discuss and pilot innovative evaluation activities;
- a peer-reviewed Conference on a broad range of issues, including
- investigation continuing the activities of the Evaluation Labs;
- experiments using multilingual and multimodal data; in particular, but not only, data resulting from CLEF activities;
- research in evaluation methodologies and challenges.

Since 2000 CLEF has played a leading role in stimulating investigation and research in a wide range of key areas in the information retrieval domain. It has promoted the study and implementation of appropriate evaluation methodologies for diverse types of tasks and media. Over the years, a wide, strong, and multidisciplinary research community has been built, which covers and spans the different areas of expertise needed to deal with the breadth of CLEF activities.


CALL FOR BIDS

The CLEF Steering Committee solicits proposals from groups interested in organizing the CLEF conference and labs in September 2018.

Groups submitting a bid for CLEF 2018 also commit themselves to collect membership fees on behalf of the CLEF Association and to pass them to the CLEF Association.

Guidelines on submitting a bid can be found in the Template for Bids available at:

http://www.clef-initiative.eu/documents/71612/87713/CLEF-Initiative-Template_for_bids.docx

Bids must be submitted by *Tuesday, May 31st 2016* by email to the Steering Commitee Chair Nicola Ferro (chair at clef-initiative.eu <mailto:chair at clef-initiative.eu>).

The Steering Committee will review and select the proposals. The Steering Committee can ask for modifications and changes to the proposals, if deemed necessary.

Interested parties can contact the Steering Committee Chair Nicola Ferro (chair at clef-initiative.eu <mailto:chair at clef-initiative.eu>) to receive further details.


IMPORTANT DATES

- Bid submission deadline: May 31st, 2016
- Feedback to bidders and discussion: June - July 2016
- Bid selection: July 2016


STEERING COMMITTEE

- Martin Braschler, Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland
- Khalid Choukri, Evaluations and Language resources Distribution Agency (ELDA), France
- Paul Clough, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom
- Nicola Ferro, University of Padua, Italy
- Julio Gonzalo, National Distance Education University (UNED), Spain
- Donna Harman, National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), USA
- Djoerd Hiemstra, University of Twente, The Netherlands
- Evangelos Kanoulas,  University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Mihai Lupu, Vienna University of Technology, Austria
- Josiane Mothe, IRIT, Université de Toulouse, France
- Henning Müller, University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland (HES-SO), Switzerland
- Maarten de Rijke, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Paolo Rosso, Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain
- Giuseppe Santucci, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
- Jacques Savoy, University of Neuchêtel, Switzerland
- Christa Womser-Hacker, University of Hildesheim, Germany