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* CALL FOR PAPERS *
* PaIR'08 *
* *
* 1st International CIKM Workshop on *
* PATENT INFORMATION RETRIEVAL *
* *
* October 30, 2008, Napa Vallay *
* *
* http://www.ir-facility.org/events/pair08 *
* *
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1.) Scope of the Workshop
-------------------------

Patent Information Retrieval specialists in the 21st century face
many challenges.
They must search very large numbers of documents in multiple
languages, expressing complex
technological concepts through sophisticated legal clauses. Despite a
great deal of theoretical
development in Information Retrieval techniques, advanced search
tools for patent professionals
are still in their infancy.

The objective of the workshop is to provide a forum for Information
Retrieval and Knowledge
Management scientists as well as Patent Retrieval experts from
industry to study the next
generation of patent search tools. We encourage IP professionals to
present their special
information needs and IR&KM researchers to present relevant technical
ideas, for example for
high recall search in prior art searching. We will also promote
exchange of ideas on measuring
the progress of system performance for retrieval tasks in the
intellectual property domain.
The outcome of this workshop will be incorporated into a TREC track
including patent search,
which is planned for 2009.

2.) Topics of Interest
-------------------------

We solicit two types of papers: research papers and industry papers.
Suggested topics for research papers include, but are not limited to:

* Information retrieval evaluation
* Test collections
* Large-scale information retrieval experiments
* Parallel and distributed information retrieval
* Ranking strategies
* Query validation and query quality analysis
* Query expansion
* Interactive retrieval
* Session-based information retrieval
* User modeling
* Handling of noisy data (OCR/spelling/typing errors)
* XML retrieval
* Cross-lingual information retrieval

Industry papers shall present research challenges.
Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

* Patent search workflow
* Patent search strategies
* Information need of the patent researcher
* Shortcomings of current patent search tools
* Case studies
* Quality of patent data

3.) Submission Guidelines
--------------------------
The Workshop Committee encourages the submission of high quality
research and industrial papers, which are not published or under
consideration elsewhere, with special emphasis on Patent
Retrieval evaluation methods. Research papers will be (double blind)
peer-reviewed by at least 3 members of the international program
committee. Manuscripts should be formatted using the
ACM camera-ready templates (both for MS word and Latex) available at
http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates .
There are two styles on the website. Both the Strict Adherence to
SIGS and the Tighter Alternate style are allowed. Papers cannot
exceed 8 pages in length.
A website with camera-ready instructions is available.
Full papers should be submitted in PDF format to
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=pair08.
The accepted papers will be published in book form.


4.) Important Dates
-------------------

Individual workshop papers due July 20, 2008
Notification of Acceptance: August 10, 2008
Camera ready August 15, 2008 (hard deadline for publication)
Workshop date: October 30, 2008


5.) Organization
-------------------
General Chair
John Tait, Information Retrieval Facility (Austria)

Workshop Organizers
Helmut Berger, Matrixware Information Services Gmbh (Austria)
Michael Dittenbach, Matrixware Information Services Gmbh (Austria)
Georg Sommer, Information Retrieval Facility (Austria)

Program Committee
Leif Azzopardi, University of Glasgow, (UK)
Helmut Berger, Matrixware Information Services Gmbh (Austria)
Jamie Callan, Carnegie Mellon University (USA)
Yves Chiaramella, Joseph Fourier University (France)
Bruce Croft, University of Massachusetts Amherst (USA)
Barrou Diallo, Information Retrieval Facility (Austria)
Michael Dittenbach, Matrixware Information Services Gmbh (Austria)
Gerhard Fischer, Syngenta (Switzerland)
Karl Fröschl, University of Vienna (Austria)
Gerben Gieling, Synthon (The Netherlands)
Birger Larsen, Royal School of Library and Information Science
Copenhagen (Denmark)
Dieter Merkl, Vienna University of Technolgy (Austria)
Andreas Pesenhofer, Matrixware Information Services Gmbh (Austria)
Daniel J. Phelps, DJP Information Consulting Services, LLC (USA)
Andreas Rauber, Vienna University of Technolgy (Austria)
Giovanna Roda, Matrixware Information Services Gmbh (Austria)
Michael Schwantner, FIZ Karlsruhe (Germany)
Georg Sommer, Information Retrieval Facility (Austria)
A Min Tjoa, Vienna University of Technolgy (Austria)
Jianhan Zhu, The Open University (UK)


6.) Contact Information
--------------------------
Georg Sommer, Information Retrieval Facility (Austria),
georg.sommer@ir-facility.org