3th International Workshop on Similarity Search and Applications (SISAP 2010)

http://www.sisap.org/2010

September 20 - 21, 2010
Istanbul, Turkey

BACKGROUND:

The International Workshop on Similarity Search and Applications
(SISAP) is a conference devoted to similarity searching, with emphasis
on metric space searching. It aims to fill in the gap left by the
various scientific venues devoted to similarity searching in spaces
with coordinates, by providing a common forum for theoreticians and
practitioners around the problem of similarity searching in general
spaces (metric and non-metric) or using distance-based (as opposed to
coordinate-based) techniques in general.

SISAP aims to become an ideal forum to exchange real-world,
challenging and exciting examples of applications, new indexing
techniques, common testbeds and benchmarks, source code, and
up-to-date literature through a Web page serving the similarity
searching community. Authors are expected to use the testbeds and code
from the SISAP Web site for comparing new applications, databases,
indexes and algorithms.

After the very successful first event in Cancun, Mexico in 2008, the second in Prague, Czech Republic 2009, the
third SISAP will be held, on September 20 - 21,
2010.

Call for papers

Authors are encouraged to submit previously unpublished papers on their research in similarity search and applications. The proceedings of SISAP 2010 will be published by Conference Publishing Services. A special issue with the extended versions of the four best SISAP 2010 papers will be invited for publication in Information Systems (Elsevier) (subject to additional reviewing).
Contributions to the conference should fall into the following categories:

Full papers:
Basic techniques: general methods that apply to arbitrary metric spaces, nonmetric or (dis)similarity spaces, or high-dimensional vector spaces. We strongly encourage that those be accompanied with an open-source implementation conforming the interface of the Web site and to be tested with a relevant subset of the spaces included in the Web site. This will favor uniform comparison and also permit comparing the technique with future developments.
Applied techniques: methods that apply to specific similarity search problems. Those papers are also encouraged to contribute with the code and, especially, with the similarity computation function and the datasets related to the specific problem they address (if they are new), for the Web site.

Posters:
Domain-specific spaces and similarities: papers that challenge and motivate for searching in new spaces (i.e. domain-specific similarity search). This type of contribution is expected to provide a thorough study of the non/metric space properties (e.g., its intrinsic dimension) or the similarity measure, and must include code for the similarity computation and datasets for the Web site. For this kind of paper a real-world domain-specific application of similarity search is expected (e.g., multimedia databases, (bio)chemical & medical databases, biometric databases, scientific & sensory databases, etc.).

Demos:
Similarity retrieval engines: papers that present prototypical non-commercial engine entirely devoted to similarity search applications. The presentation should cover the domains of applicability (e.g., image retrieval system), the architecture, scalability, user interfaces, optional comparison with similar engines, etc. This type of contribution must include either an installation package of the demo application + database, or must be installed as a web application accessible to the SISAP PC.
The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Range search
knn search
Limited-range knn search
Reverse knn search
New complex similarity query types
Similarity joins
Clustering (applied to indexing)
Parallelism & distributed algorithms
Approximate searching
Computation of intrinsic dimension
Cost models
Embeddings
Languages for similarity databases

Important Dates
Paper submission: July 2nd, 2010
Notification of acceptance: August 8th, 2010
Final version submission: September 5th, 2010
Early registration: August 15th, 2010

Program Committee

Edgar Chávez, Universidad Michoacana, Mexico
Alfredo Ferro, Università di Catania, Italy
Daniel Keim, Universität Konstanz, Germany
Daniel Miranker, University of Texas at Austin, USA
Gonzalo Navarro, Universidad de Chile, Chile
Hanan Samet, University of Maryland, USA
Tomas Skopal, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic
Agma Traina, University of São Paulo at São Carlos, Brazil
Pavel Zezula, Masaryk University, Czech Republic

Program Co-Chairs

Paolo Ciaccia, Università di Bologna, Italy
Marco Patella, Università di Bologna, Italy

Local Organizing Committee

Cengiz Celik, Bilkent University, Turkey

MORE INFORMATION & WEB OF THE WORKSHOP:

http://www.sisap.org/2010