The annual ACM SIGIR conference is the primary international forum for presenting new research results and demonstrating new systems and techniques in the broad field of information retrieval (IR). The 50th ACM SIGIR conference will be held at the Signia by Hilton San Jose, California, USA, from 18 to 24 July 2027. In this anniversary year, the Doctoral Colloquium has a special role: supporting the researchers who will carry the field into its next fifty years.

We invite students to apply to the SIGIR 2027 Doctoral Colloquium (DC). The DC provides a unique opportunity for doctoral students to explore and develop their research interests under the guidance of distinguished researchers from both academia and industry. Participation in the Colloquium will enable students to share their work with peers and senior researchers in the field.

The Doctoral Colloquium is particularly suited for candidates who have made some research progress, but who are not so far along that they can no longer make changes in their research plans. Typically, this means that they have defined their topic and completed some research, but still have at least a year of research remaining before completing their dissertation (in many universities, this corresponds to the dissertation proposal stage).

The objectives of the Doctoral Colloquium are:

• To provide a forum where doctoral students can present and discuss their research with experienced IR researchers, the members of the Doctoral Colloquium Program Committee. To facilitate interactions with Program Committee members, students will be paired with at least one mentor.
• To provide students with an opportunity to establish a supportive community, including other doctoral students at a similar stage of their dissertation research.
• To contribute to the conference goals through in-person interaction with other researchers and conference events.

Important Dates

All deadlines are 11:59 pm Anywhere on Earth (AoE).

Colloquium Format and Participation Expectations

The Doctoral Colloquium will take place in person on Sunday, 18 July 2027, the day before the main conference commences. We anticipate a mix of student presentations, each followed by questions and feedback; mentoring sessions in which each student meets with their assigned mentors; invited talks and plenary discussions on research and careers; and interactive networking sessions. Selected students are expected to attend the Colloquium in person and present their work.

To apply to participate in the Doctoral Colloquium, doctoral students should submit a paper of up to 5 pages, including all figures, tables, references, and an appendix containing the student’s and advisor’s statements.

Candidates will be selected based on the potential of their research to have a future impact on the field of information retrieval, as well as the likely benefits to the student from participating in the Doctoral Colloquium. The SIGIR 2027 Doctoral Colloquium is deeply committed to advancing the field of IR by fostering diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. We warmly encourage applications from individuals of all backgrounds, including women, gender-diverse individuals, and other groups that have been historically underrepresented in the field.

For each selected student, a one-page extended abstract will be published in the conference proceedings. Extended abstracts will be invited after selection and should not be included with the submission. Details will be shared with the camera-ready instructions upon acceptance.

Doctoral students who submit to the Doctoral Colloquium are allowed to have previously published their research and are encouraged to submit their work to the different SIGIR 2027 tracks and associated workshops.

Priority is given to students selected for the Colloquium when travel grants are determined for the conference. For its 50th anniversary, SIGIR 2027 is expanding its travel grant program with named, fully funded grants for students and researchers. Application details will be available on the SIGIR 2027 website; students must apply for a grant to be considered.

Submission Guidelines

The submitted proposal, solely authored by the student, will be the basis for selection to participate in the Doctoral Colloquium and for the detailed discussions at the Colloquium. The submitted paper should include:

• Motivation for the proposed research.
• Background and related work (including key references).
• Description of the proposed research, including the main research questions.
• Research methodology and proposed experiments (where appropriate).
• Specific research issues for discussion at the Doctoral Colloquium.

In addition, the proposal should include an appendix (placed after the references) with:

• A detailed statement by the student explaining why they want to participate in the SIGIR 2027 Doctoral Colloquium at this point in their doctoral studies, and how they hope it will contribute to the development of their work and potential future career.
• A statement from the student’s advisor/supervisor stating how the student would benefit from attending the Doctoral Colloquium. Advisors should also specifically state whether the student has written, or is close to completing, a thesis proposal (or equivalent), and when they expect the student to defend their dissertation if they progress at a typical rate.

Format Requirements

Doctoral students should submit their proposals for review in the ACM two-column conference format. Suitable LaTeX, Word, and Overleaf templates are available from the ACM website (use the sigconf proceedings template for LaTeX and the Interim Template for Word).

The proposal must not exceed five pages in total, including all figures, tables, references, and the appendix containing the student and advisor statements. The first page must contain the title of the paper, the author’s full name, affiliation, and contact details, an abstract of up to 250 words, the ACM Computing Classification System (CCS) categories, and up to three keywords that describe the topic areas.

It is the student’s responsibility to ensure that their submission uses no unusual formatting features and is printable on a standard printer. Submissions will be reviewed by the members of the Doctoral Colloquium Program Committee.

Review Process and Selection Criteria

The confidentiality of submissions is maintained throughout the review process. All rejected submissions will be kept confidential in perpetuity. Submissions should contain no information or materials that are proprietary at publication time.

Proposals will be evaluated by the Doctoral Colloquium Program Committee based on:

• Originality of the work with respect to current concepts and techniques (provide relevant citations).
• Importance of the work with respect to fundamental issues in information retrieval (clearly identify the problems you are trying to solve).
• Rigor and validity of claims, argumentation, methodology, results, and interpretations.
• Clarity and persuasiveness of expression.

To provide maximum feedback to each student, participation in the Colloquium is limited. Selection is based on three broad criteria:

• The degree to which the applicant is positioned to benefit from participation, including the student’s position in the doctoral process (the greatest benefit is for students with a developed research idea, but with much of the work yet to be done).
• The degree to which the student may otherwise lack access to a diverse set of feedback and input on their research plans (e.g., availability of local experts and advisors).
• Diversity of participation, including diversity by institution, country, research topic and approach, and demographics. In general, we may limit participation to one or two students per institution, depending on the number of applicants.

Other Submission Requirements

Submitting to this track indicates your agreement to and compliance with the common ACM and SIGIR 2027 Policies and Requirements. These policies and requirements include (but are not limited to) authorship, ethics, the use of AI, ACM author open access page charges, and at least one author registering for and attending the conference. As Doctoral Colloquium proposals are solely authored, the student must register for the conference and attend the Colloquium in person.

Submission System

Doctoral Colloquium submissions should be submitted in PDF through the TBC system, selecting the “SIGIR 2027 Doctoral Colloquium” track:

(link TBA)

Doctoral Colloquium Chairs and Contact

doctoral-colloquium@sigir2027.org

• Negar Arabzadeh, University of California, Berkeley, USA
• Qingyao Ai, Tsinghua University, China