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Workshop proposals

SIGIR’27 Call for Workshop Proposals

The annual SIGIR conference is the primary international forum for presenting new research results and demonstrating new systems and techniques in the broad information retrieval (IR) field. The 50th ACM SIGIR conference will be run in-person from July 18-24, 2027, in San Jose (Silicon Valley), California, USA, with a satellite venue in Tianjin, China.

Workshop Format

Workshops will be on-site (San Jose only) and in person. All workshops will require at least one organizer to attend, as well as a minimum number of participants.

Organizers of accepted workshops will be invited to submit a camera-ready summary (up to 4 pages maximum) for inclusion in the SIGIR 2027 conference proceedings.

Important Dates (AoE)

MilestoneDate
Workshop proposal submission:January 15, 2027
Workshop notification:February 15, 2027
Camera-ready submission:April 29, 2027

Suggested timelines for workshop submissions

MilestoneDate
Workshop paper submission:April 17, 2027 (recommended)
Workshop paper notification:May 17, 2027 (recommended)
Workshop day:July 23 (Friday), 2027

Topics of Interest

Workshop topics typically match those identified in the SIGIR 2027 Call for Full Papers. Proposals on other topics related to IR are welcome. We specifically welcome proposals related to:

  • How IR has evolved over the past 50 years
  • Evaluation then and now: What works and still does not work in IR evaluation
  • GenAI (LLM and VLM) effects on IR algorithms, capabilities and impacts of cost and access to compute
  • HCI and UX aspects of IR
  • Societal impacts of IR, search, recommendations and agents
  • Ethical and safety aspects of IR including from GenAI components
  • Indigenous or first nations ways of knowing and information retrieval
  • Agentic and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) IR paradigms

We encourage highly interactive workshops (either full-day or half-day) focusing on either in-depth analysis or broad-ranging approaches to IR. The format of each workshop is determined by the organizers. We expect workshops to contain ample time for discussion and engagement for all participants – not just those presenting papers. Workshops fostering collaboration, discussion, group problem-solving, and community-building initiatives are particularly encouraged. Workshops focused solely on the presentation of papers in a “mini conference” format are discouraged. Where workshop organizers have papers submitted in advance, we have provided suggested dates, however we leave this to the discretion of the organizers.

The organizers of accepted workshops are expected to define the workshop’s focus, gather and review submissions, and decide on the final program content. Organizers are encouraged to write an article for the ACM SIGIR Forum summarizing the event. At least one organizer must attend the entire workshop.

Submission Guidelines

Workshop proposals, in no more than 4 pages (including references), should include the following information:

  • Title
  • Motivation for the workshop, its appropriateness for SIGIR, its complementarity to the main SIGIR 2027 conference topics, and why it would be of interest to the IR community
  • Theme and purpose of the workshop
  • Format (half-day/full-day), planned activities, and a tentative schedule of events, including potential keynote or other speakers
  • Planned interaction and engagement: Describe how the workshop will be structured to encourage active discussions, idea exchange, and collaboration among participants. Detail how the organizers will create an interactive format, such as breakout discussions, group exercises, and panels designed to deepen engagement with the topic.
  • Distinction from main conference topics: Outline how the workshop theme covers areas complementary to or not typically discussed in the main conference program, highlighting emerging, niche, or interdisciplinary topics that could provide fresh perspectives to participants.
  • Audience reach: Describe the potential to attract attendees who may not traditionally participate in SIGIR, including practitioners, academics from related fields, or industry specialists with unique insights or applications.
  • Special requirements and their importance to the workshop’s success, along with a contingency plan if requirements are unmet.
  • List of organizers with a short biographical sketch of each organizer, describing relevant qualifications and experience
  • For each organizer, an indication of their likelihood of attending onsite
  • Names of potential program committee (PC) members – if a PC is required (any workshop involving written papers should have a PC)
  • Selection process for participants and/or presenters
  • Expected target audience and how the workshop will be advertised to reach them
  • Related workshops (if applicable): if previously held at SIGIR or another conference, organizers should briefly describe past attendance, outcomes, and the need for another workshop

Workshop proposals should be prepared in the current ACM two-column conference format. Suitable LaTeX, Word, and Overleaf templates are available from the ACM Website (use the sigconf proceedings template). For LaTeX, the following should be used:

\documentclass[sigconf,natbib=true]{acmart}

Proposals will be reviewed based on quality, complementarity to SIGIR 2027 conference topics, likelihood of attracting enough participants, and venue hosting capacity. Submissions will be reviewed by a PC selected for this purpose, with final decisions made at the SIGIR PC meeting.

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.

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