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