Fourth Workshop on
Exploiting Semantic Annotations for Information Retrieval (ESAIR 2011)

CIKM 2011, October 28, Glasgow
http://www.sics.se/events/esair2011/

Submissions due: July 8

* Call for Papers

There is an increasing amount of structure on the Web as a result of modern Web languages, microformats 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.

The main question for the workshop is how to best formulate and use semantic annotation of information objects and information streams for information access tasks such as search, retrieval, categorization and related information refinement tasks.

* Many Open Questions

The Workshop will bring together researchers from a range of different disciplines (NLP, DB, IR, KM, and Web) and together identify the natural use cases, the barriers to success, and work on ways of addressing them:

- 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 are the prerequisites of successful application? How can the expressive power of semantic annotation best be put to use? What is keeping searchers from exploring these powerful search request?

- Annotation and analysis: What types of annotation are available? Are there crucial differences between author-, software-, user-, and machine-generated annotations? Named entities, temporal expressions on the one hand and sentiment and hedging on the other are examples of analyses beyond topic that have moved to profitable application. Are there other types of annotations that are within our grasp? What semantic theories do we need to formulate further annotation schemes?

- Data Curation: Annotations may live inside documents, or be stored externally (e.g., annotated by uncontrolled authors or tools) or both (e.g., annotation with linked data). How to keep data and metadata together? Does the annotation stop somewhere, or is all social or linked data of potential use for searching or navigating. How important is source of the annotations? Are there issues with credibility or trust that need to be taken into account?

- Result Aggregation: Whereas IR focuses almost exclusively at finding individual chunks of information, DB naturally focuses on results that combine information and produce aggregated results (think of OLAP queries), and KM naturally deal with the whole information space. How can we fruitfully combine these strengths?

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 8, 2011, further submission details are on http://www.sics.se/events/esair2011/

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

Omar Alonso, Microsoft
Jaap Kamps, University of Amsterdam
Jussi Karlgren, SICS