Seventh Workshop on
Exploiting Semantic Annotations for Information Retrieval (ESAIR'14)

CIKM 2014, November 7, Shanghai
http://staff.science.uva.nl/~kamps/esair14/

Submissions due: July 30

* Call for Papers

There is an increasing amount of structure on the Web as a result of modern Web languages, micro-formats 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 increasing 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. To complicate matters, standard text search excels at shallow information needs expressed by short keyword queries, and here semantic annotation contributes very little, if anything.

The main remaining challenge is on the user's side, and a more dynamic approach is emerging by exploiting new forms of query autosuggest. The potential of rich document annotations can only be realized if matched by more articulate queries exploiting these powerful retrieval cues. How can the query suggestion paradigm be used to encourage searcher to articulate longer queries, with concepts and relations linking their statement of request to existing semantic models? How do entity results and social network data in “graph search” change the classic division between searchers and information and lead to extreme personalization -- are you the query? How to leverage transaction logs and recommendation, and how adaptive should we make the system? What are the privacy ramifications and the UX aspects -- how to avoid creeping out users?

* Many Open Questions

The Workshop will bring together researchers working with semantic annotations, its use cases, its sources (authoring to NLP tools), its users, and its use in DB, IR, KM, or Web research, and work together on a range of open questions:

- 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 is keeping searchers from exploring these powerful search request? What impact has the web of data with more and more information in preprocessed form?

- Annotations: What types of annotation are available? Are there crucial differences between author-, software-, user-, and machine-generated annotations? Do we annotate types/classes/categories ("person") or instances ("Albert Einstein")? How similar or different are linked data and annotated text? What are the limitations of the current annotations schemes, and how to overcome them?

- Rich Context: Do we annotate text? Or also search requests and interactions, and their broader context? Besides personalization and geo-positional information, mobiles have a wide and growing range of locational, mechanical and even biometrical sensor data available to them. Can kick-start the query by inferring task and situational context in the mobile use case?

- (Un)certainty: How should we interpret the annotations? Can we reliably link textual annotations to known entity catalogs? Can expect a messy world to be captured in a clean set of meaningful categories? Or is all information fundamentally uncertain and only partly known? How can we fruitfully combine information retrieval and semantic web approaches?

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+1-page research or position paper explaining your key wishes or key points,

- and take actively part in the discussion at the Workshop.

What's a 2+1 page paper? We like short and focused contributions highlighting your main point, claim, observation, finding, experiment, project, etc, (roughly 2 pages of mainly text) but we also like clear tables, graphs, and full citations (that's the "+1" page). So your submission can up three pages, as long as max. 2 of them are narrative text.

The deadline is Wednesday July 30, 2014, further submission details are on http://staff.science.uva.nl/~kamps/esair14/

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, Gavagai & KTH Stockholm