SISAP 2011 - 4th International Conference on SImilarity Search and APplications

http://www.sisap.org/2011

Lipari, Italy
June 30 -- July 1, 2011


*BACKGROUND*

The annual International Conference 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 is at its fourth edition and 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.

A small selection of best papers will be recommended for inclusion in a special issue of Information Systems (Elsevier) dedicated to this conference.
SISAP 2011 is organized in cooperation with ACM SIGSPATIAL and the papers are indexed in the ACM Digital Library.



*CALL FOR PAPERS*

Authors are invited to submit previously unpublished papers on their research in similarity search and applications. Papers should present original research
contributions which bring out the importance of algorithms to applications. A small selection of best papers will be recommended for inclusion in a special
issue a Journal dedicated to this conference.

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. Papers
should bring out new algorithmic points that are motivated by the application. 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. Paper should highlight successful applications relying on similarity search algorithms.
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.
Survey papers: mixing applications with algorithms.

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 strongly encouraged and 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 engines 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)
* Indexing based on hashing
* Parallelism& distributed algorithms
* Approximate searching
* Computation of intrinsic dimension
* Cost models
* Embeddings
* Languages for similarity databases

SISAP 2011 is organized in cooperation with ACM SIGSPATIAL and the papers are indexed in the ACM Digital Library.



*INVITED SPEAKERS*

* Roded Sharan, Tel Aviv University, Israel
* Paolo Ferragina, Università di Pisa, Italy



*SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS*

Papers must be submitted as pdf files and must not exceed 8 pages (full
papers), or 2 pages (posters or demos) and must adhere to the standard ACM SIG
Proceedings format. Formatting instructions and LaTeX/Word macros are available
on the ACM site (http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates).

Additional appendices can use more pages but they will be read at the
discretion of the reviewer, so they should not be used for material that is
essential to understand the relevance of the contribution.

One author per paper is required to register and attend the conference to
present the paper if accepted for publication.

IMPORTANT DATES

* Paper submission: March 10th, 2011
* Notification of acceptance: April 10th, 2011
* Final version submission: May 10th, 2011
* Conference begins: June 30th, 2011


Program Committee

* Michal Batko, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
* Benjamin Bustos, Universidad de Chile, Chile
* Edgar Chávez, Universidad Michoacana, Mexico
* Paolo Ciaccia, Università di Bologna, Italy
* Vlastislav Dohnal, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
* Alfredo Ferro (PC chair), University of Catania, Italy
* Rosalba Giugno, University of Catania, Italy
* Daniel Keim, Universität Konstanz, Germany
* Rui Mao, Shenzhen University, China
* David Novak, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
* Daniel Miranker, University of Texas at Austin, USA
* Gonzalo Navarro, Universidad de Chile, Chile
* Marco Patella, Università di Bologna, Italy
* Vladimir Pestov, University of Ottawa, Canada
* Alfredo Pulvirenti, University of Catania, Italy
* Hanan Samet, University of Maryland, USA
* Jan Sedmidubsky, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
* Tomas Skopal, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic
* Agma Traina, University of São Paulo at São Carlos, Brazil
* Pavel Zezula, Masaryk University, Czech Republic


Local Organizing Committee

* Alfredo Ferro, University of Catania, Italy
* Rosalba Giugno, University of Catania, Italy
* Alfredo Pulvirenti, University of Catania, Italy



*CONFERENCE WEBSITE*

For more and up-to-date information, please visit the conference website at
URL:

http://www.sisap.org/2011