The European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR) is the prime European forum for the presentation of original research in the general field of Information Retrieval. Societal issues (such as algorithmic bias and fairness, privacy, and transparency) are becoming more and more relevant for making advances towards responsible Information Retrieval (IR). Indeed, these matters have a resonance at an interdisciplinary level (e.g., philosophy, law, sociology, civil society), beyond the purely technical perspective. For this reason, getting diverse communities involved in the discussion becomes essential. Industry is impacted as well, so letting involved stakeholders benefit from an interdisciplinary discussion on how societal aspects influence its functioning is prominent. Following initiatives from the sister communities (e.g., The ACM Web Conference – WWW) this year, we are extending the scope of these aspects in a dedicated track, entitled “IR for Good”.
“IR for Good” will be ECIR’s track aimed at collecting high-quality, high-impact, original research in this emerging yet broad field, providing also a common ground for all the relevant parties. We are particularly interested in bringing researchers and practitioners with diverse backgrounds, from both academia and industry (especially from sister communities), as well as the civil society together to present and discuss recent advances towards fair, transparent, ethical, inclusive, and sustainable IR.
Topics of Interest
We will consider contributions that propose positions, methods, tools, techniques, and experiments addressing fairness, accountability, transparency, societal impact, sustainable development, and ethics for IR from an interdisciplinary perspective. Not only contributions from a technical point of view, but also those that focus on other facets of these societal issues (e.g., philosophy, law, sociology) are welcome. The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Algorithmic fairness and algorithmic bias in IR
- Accountability and ethical issues in IR
- Contribution of IR technologies to UNESCO SDGs
- Credibility and reputation in IR
- Fairness concepts, definition of fairness
- Ethical models/frameworks for IR platforms and data
- Explainability and interpretability of IR approaches
- Explainable user interfaces, taxonomies for explanations in IR
- Fairness assessment and evaluation protocols, including data, for IR
- Fake news, hate speech, misinformation, and disinformation in IR
- Impact of IR platforms and algorithms on employment
- Legal audits and aspects on the use and analysis of IR
- Human-perceived consequences of IR algorithms
- Mitigation methods against bias and unfairness in IR
- Participatory studies to identify explanatory needs and schemas
- Philosophical aspects behind the use of IR
- Privacy-preserving IR studies and methods
- Robustness and security of IR algorithms
- Sociological aspects influenced by or influencing IR
Submission Guidelines
The “IR for Good” track provides the opportunity for researchers to present state-of-the-art research on the track topic, which makes, or has the potential to make, a significant contribution to the field.
- Full papers are up to 12 pages in length plus additional pages for references. Appendices count toward the page limit. Please put appendices before the references for paper submission.
- Short papers are up to 6 pages in length plus additional pages for references. Appendices count toward the page limit. Please put appendices before the references for paper submission.
All submissions must be written in English. All papers should be submitted electronically through the EasyChair submission system (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ecir2024). Select the “IR for Good” track.
For the preparation of their papers, the authors should consult Springer’s authors’ guidelines and use their proceedings templates, either for LaTeX or for Word (https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines). Please also note that Springer encourages the authors to include their ORCIDs in their submitted papers (https://www.springer.com/gp/authors-editors/orcid). Once the paper has been submitted, changes relating to its authorship cannot be made. Submissions will be refereed via a double-blind peer review, with an initial first stage review followed by a second stage of discussion.
Accepted papers will be published in the main conference proceedings in the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. The corresponding author of each accepted paper, acting on behalf of all of the authors of that paper, must complete and sign a Consent-to-Publish form. The corresponding author signing the copyright form should match the corresponding author marked on the paper. The proceedings will be distributed to all delegates at the conference. The accepted papers will have to be presented at the conference and at least one author for each accepted paper is required to register.
Dual Submission Policy
Papers submitted to “IR for Good” at ECIR 2024 should be substantially different from papers that have been previously published, or accepted for publication, or that are under review at other venues.
Exceptions to this rule are:
- Submission is permitted for papers presented or to be presented at conferences or workshops without proceedings.
- Submission is permitted for papers that have previously been made available as a technical report (e.g., in institutional archives or preprint archives like arXiv). However, we discourage this since it places anonymity at risk; in particular, please do not publish your paper at arXiv and submit to ECIR at the same time, some days before, or during the reviewing period of ECIR.
- If your paper already is available as a technical report:
- You might not want to use the exact same title and abstract for your ECIR submission (in case of acceptance at ECIR, the title of your submission still might be changed “back”).
- Please do not cite your technical report and make some effort to avoid any issues that may harm the double-blindness of your submission. Reviewers will receive guidance that ask them to refrain from trying to break blindness if at all possible too, but be aware that the availability of a technical report for an ECIR submission can cause issues.
Ethics and Professional Conduct
“IR for Good” at ECIR 2024 expects the authors (as well as the PC, and the organizing committee) to adhere to accepted standards on ethics and professionalism in our community, namely:
- The ACM’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct,
- The ACM’s Conflict of Interest Policy.
- The ACM’s Policy on Plagiarism, Misrepresentation, and Falsification.
- The ACM’s Policy Against Harassment.
Important Dates
- “IR for Good” paper abstract submission: October 23, 2023, 11:59pm (AoE)
- “IR for Good” paper submission: October 30, 2023, 11:59pm (AoE)
- “IR for Good” paper notification: December 14, 2023
- “IR for Good” day: March 28, 2024
“IR for Good” Track Chairs
- Ludovico Boratto (University of Cagliari, Italy)
- Mirko Marras (University of Cagliari, Italy)
Contact
For further information on the call, please send an email to the ECIR 2024 “IR for Good” Track Chairs at ecir24-ir4good at easychair.org.