CALL FOR PAPERS
                    SIGIR'07  Workshop
                        IRGM 2007

Information Retrieval and Applications of Graphical Models

             -- http://irgm.bpiwowar.net --
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MOTIVATION:

Probabilistic models constitute an important kind of Information Retrieval
(IR) model. They have been long and widely used, and offer a principled way
of managing the uncertainty that naturally appears in many elements within
this field. Nowadays, the dominant approach for managing probability within
the field of Artificial Intelligence is based on the use of Bayesian
Networks, and these have also been used within IR as extensions of classical
probabilistic models.

Broadly speaking, a Graphical Model (GM)  consists of a qualitative part, a
graph,  which may be directed and acyclic in the case of Bayesian Networks
(BN), and a quantitative one, a collection of numerical parameters, as the
conditional probability tables for BNs or possibility distributions for
possibilistic networks. The knowledge represented in the graphical component
is expressed in terms of dependence and independence relationships between
variables. These relationships are encoded by means of the presence or
absence of links between nodes in the graph. The knowledge represented in
the numerical part quantifies the dependences encoded in the graph, and
allows us to introduce uncertainty into the model.

Therefore, these tools could be very appropriate to model and solve
problems, as those found in the IR field.

GOAL:

As the main goal, this workshop wants to be a common space where
researchers, in general, and young researchers specifically, can show their
innovative GMs applications to the field of IR, in its wide problem space,
opening a new discussion forum. Graphical Models include Bayesian Networks,
possibilistic networks, Markov networks, dependence graphs,  influence
diagrams,  probability trees, decision trees, and Fisher Kernel
Discriminants, among others.

TOPICS OF INTEREST:

The scope of this workshop will be all the applications of any type of GMs
to IR problems. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

- Information Retrieval Models for flat or structured document collections
(based on SGML, XML, etc.).
- Cross-language retrieval.
- Web  Information Retrieval / Applications to hypertext.
- Indexing and summarization.
- Multimedia information access, as video, audio or  image retrieval.
- Document filtering. Recommender Systems: content-based and collaborative.
- Question answering and extraction.
- Text data mining and machine learning for IR.
- Document classification and clustering  (for flat or structured documents).
- Any other relevant IR topic.

Theoretical or experimental research papers representing original,
previously unpublished works, are invited to be submitted to the workshop,
not exceeding 8 pages. Positioning papers  describing current research are
also welcome, as well as opinion papers discussing GMs in an IR context.
Paper should emphasize the strengths (and weaknesses) of the GMs to solve an
IR problem, especially with respect to other methods. Contributions will be
peer-reviewed by two experts from the related field belonging to the
workshop PC.

IMPORTANT DATES:

- Deadline for paper submission: May 31th 2007.
- Acceptance / rejection notification: June 19th 2007.
- Deadline for camera ready submission: July 1st 2007.
- Workshop: Amsterdam, July 27th 2007.


PROGRAM COMMITTEE:

- Peter Bruza (Queensland University of Technology, Australia).
- Eric Horvitz (Microsoft Research, USA).
- Gianni Amati (Fondazione Ugo Bordoni, Italy).
- Berthier Ribeiro-Neto (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil).
- Iadh Ounis (University of Glasgow, United Kingdom).
- Luis M. de Campos (Universidad de Granada, Spain).
- Didier Dubois (Université Paul Sabatier, France).
- Pável Calado (Instituto Superior Tecnico, Portugal).
- Ludovic Denoyer (LIP6, University Paris 6, France).
- Yi Zhang (University of California, USA).
- Alfonso E. Romero (Universidad de Granada, Spain).
- Donald Metzler (University of Massachusetts, USA).
- Dunja Mladenic (Jozef Stefan Institute, Slovenia).

PAPER PREPARATION AND SUBMISSION:

The submissions, in PDF format, not exceeding 8 pages and following the ACM
Conference style (see the ACM template page
www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html using the "Option 2" style),
will be sent by e-mail to the three organisers.

WORKSHOP ORGANIZATION AND CONTACT INFORMATION:

- Benjamin Piwowarski, Yahoo! Research Latin America (bpiwowar at
yahoo-inc.com).
- Juan M. Fernández-Luna, University of Granada (jmfluna at decsai.ugr.es).
- Juan F. Huete, University of Granada (jhg at decsai.ugr.es).

WORKSHOP WEBSITE:

http://irgm.bpiwowar.net