[ntcir:348] CFP - MLIA-CULT2010 Workshop at ECIR 2010

[Nicola Ferro <ferro@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Call for Papers

*Workshop on Multilinguality in Information Access Evaluation (MLIA-CULT
2010)  - Bringing Content, Users, Languages, and Tasks into the Loop*

Milton Keynes, UK, March 28, 2010

in conjunction with the 32nd European Conference on Information
Retrieval (ECIR 2010)

http://www.europeanaconnect.eu/MLIACULT10Workshop.php


*Aim and Scope*

Services and users of multilingual IR systems continue to evolve, with
many new factors and trends influencing the field. E.g., we are moving
to a situation in which there is no longer a single dominant language in
which most online information is captured and, with the advance of
broadband access and the evolution of both wired and wireless
connectivity, users are not just information consumers, but
also producers. Text now comes in many shapes―user generated, with low
publishing threshold, heavily contextualised, often code switching and
multi-lingual, and under little or no editorial control, changes the
scene for much of the processing frameworks we previously have been able
to assume: blogs, discussion forums, comments left behind on news sites,
IM, SMS, Twitter―many new formats for textual interaction carry valuable
and timely information, which needs specific tools for processing.

The expectations and habits of users are constantly changing, together
with the ways in which they interact with content and services, often
creating new and original ways of exploiting them. The use of national
languages on global networks is increasing rapidly and language barriers
are no longer seen as impossible to overcome but there is growing
dissatisfaction with technologies currently available to realize
this. As they live ever larger parts of their life online, users need to
be able to co-operate and communicate in a way that crosses language
boundaries and goes beyond simple translation from one language to
another. Users are very diverse in their interpretations of what a query
means to them―this issue of interpretation is amplified when crossing
language boundaries where the cultural context and norms behind a
language have to be taken into account. Interestingly, this issue gives
rise to a new type of user need in the setting of large volumes of
dynamically changing user generated content: needs for subjective
information (“What do people think about …?” and “How do people respond
to …?”)

If we are to continue advancing the state-of-the-art in multilingual
information access technologies, we need to understand a new breed of
users, performing different kinds of tasks within varying domains, often
acting within communities to find and produce information not only for
themselves, but also to share with other users. This calls for a
re-orientation of methodology and goals in the evaluation of
multilingual information access systems. We need to study and evaluate
multilingual issues from a communicative perspective rather than a
purely translational one. Clearly, data is a critical resource for these
aims―how to obtain it?

The goal of the workshop is to discuss and start understanding
and improving the multilingual user experience. How can we move
evaluation of multilingual information access (MLIA) systems beyond
system benchmarking in the Cranfield/TREC-style tradition to
assessing system effectiveness within today’s operational task
contexts? Among other things, the workshop will explore the idea of
“multilingual living laboratories” in which to conduct user studies at
scale, where infrastructure and instruments for capturing user activity
are created. The workshop will be organized around four key
dimensions: (multilingual) /content/, (multilingual) /users/,
(multilingual) /tasks/ and (multilingual) /evaluation methodology/.


*Topics for Discussion*

Relevant topics for the MLIA-CULT 2010 include, but are not limited to:

     * Proposals for, or experiences with, /living laboratories/ for
       retrieval evaluation
     * Evaluation of MLIA systems via /user-centric tasks/;
     * User & /usability indications/ for multilingual access;
     * Analysis of the impact of multilingual/multicultural differences
       on /interface/search desig//n/;
     * Evaluation and exploitation of /contextual information
       retrieva//l/ and multilinguality;
     * Evaluation protocols for taking part in the creation
       of /collaborative MLIA experiments/;
     * Requirements for MLIA systems /evaluation by stakeholders/ (search
       engines, enterprise portals, digital libraries, …);
     * Evaluation of information access on multilingual,
       /user-generated/, and fragmentary /content/;
     * Multilinguality in social media and /relevant application
       communities/, such as the digital library one;
     * /Infrastructures and frameworks/ for supporting, automating, and
       cooperating in MLIA systems evaluation.



*Important Dates *

     * Submission Deadline: Friday 15th January 2010
     * Notification of Acceptance: Monday 15th February 2010
     * Camera Ready: Friday 26th February 2010
     * Workshop: Sunday 28th March 2010.



*Format*

Authors are invited to submit electronically original papers, which have
not been published and are not under consideration elsewhere, using the
ACM SIG proceedings
format (http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates).

Two types of papers are solicited:

     * long papers: 8 pages max;
     * short papers: 4 pages max.


Papers will be peer-reviewed by at least 3 members of the program
committee. Selection will be based on originality, clarity, and
technical quality.

Papers should be submitted in PDF format to the following
address: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mliacult2010


*Organisers*

The workshop co-chairs are:

     * Nicola Ferro, University of Padova, Italy -- ferro@xxxxxxxxxxxx
       <mailto:ferro@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
     * Maarten de Rijke, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
       -- derijke@xxxxxx <mailto:derijke@xxxxxx>