Call for Papers

ICTIR 2024 invites submissions with substantial and original research on the theoretical aspects of Information Retrieval or topics from neighboring fields with a strong and clear connection to Information Retrieval.

Scope of the conference regarding methodology 

Submissions can be purely theoretical or combine theoretical and practical work, either by investigating the validity of theoretical ideas through practical implementation or evaluation, or by providing sound theoretical explanations for important aspects of practical work. In any case, the theoretical part should be a significant, integral, and non-trivial part of the paper, and not just an add-on. The term "theoretical" is meant in a comprehensive sense, encompassing not only mathematical work, but also conceptual work, all kinds of modelling (for example, models of user behavior), problem generalizations, etc. When in doubt, ask the PC chairs.

Scope of the conference regarding topic

The conference welcomes papers on all aspects of Information Retrieval. See the Call for Papers for SIGIR 2024 for a list of included topics. Topics from neighboring fields are also in scope, as long as there is a clear and significant connection to Information Retrieval. When in doubt, ask the PC chairs.

Double-blind reviewing and submissions to arXiv

The conference will employ a lightweight double-blind reviewing process.

On the one hand, a submission should not reveal the identity of the authors in any obvious way. In particular, the authors' names, affiliations, or email addresses should be nowhere visible in the submission. Any reference to the authors' own related work should be in the third person (that is, don't say "our" when referring to such work).

On the other hand, nothing should be done in the name of anonymity that weakens the submission or makes the job of reviewing the paper more difficult. Important references should be neither omitted nor anonymized. Authors may post drafts of their papers on the web, submit them to arXiv, or give talks about them.

The purpose of the double-blind reviewing is to help PC members come to an initial judgement about the paper without bias, not to make it impossible for them to discover the authors if they were to try.

Submission guidelines and formal requirements

The page limit is 9 pages in ACM SIGIR style, excluding the references and the optional appendix. If there is an appendix, it is up to the reviewers whether they consider it or even look at it. The paper must be self-contained and understandable without reading the appendix if any. When published, the appendix will not be included. The 9 pages are an upper bound, not a target. Submissions will be evaluated based on the merits of their contents, not on the number of pages. When in doubt, ask the PC chairs.

By submitting your article to an ACM Publication, you are acknowledging that you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies, including ACM's new Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects. Alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy will be investigated by ACM and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.

Please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an ORCID ID, so you can complete the publishing process for your accepted paper. ACM has been involved in ORCID from the start and we have recently made a commitment to collect ORCID IDs from all of our published authors.  The collection process has started and will roll out as a requirement throughout 2022. We are committed to improve author discoverability, ensure proper attribution and contribute to ongoing community efforts around name normalization; your ORCID ID will help in these efforts.

Key dates

Paper submission deadline: April 25, 2024
Notification of acceptance: June 6, 2024
Camera-ready deadline: June 27, 2024
Conference date: July 13, 2024
Time zone for all deadlines: Anywhere on Earth (AoE)

Submission Guidelines

We encourage authors to follow this brief checklist to strengthen an  IR paper.

Research papers must describe original work that has not been previously published, not accepted for publication elsewhere, and not simultaneously submitted or currently under review in another journal or conference (including any workshops at SIGIR 2024).

Submissions must be in English, in PDF format, and be at most 9 pages in length (including figures, tables, proofs, acknowledgments, and any content except references and optional appendices), with unrestricted space for references, in the current ACM two-column conference format. Suitable LaTeX, Word, and Overleaf templates are available from the ACM Website (use “sigconf” proceedings template for LaTeX and the Interim Template for Word). ACM’s CCS concepts and keywords are required for review.

For LaTeX, the following should be used:

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

Submissions must be anonymous and should be submitted electronically via OpenReview through the following link:
https://openreview.net/group?id=ACM.org/SIGIR/ICTIR/2024/Conference
Note that after paper decisions, reviews and meta-reviews of accepted papers will be made public, and authors of rejected papers have the option to make the reviews public as well. Reviewer and AC identities will remain anonymous.

Hannah Bast and Chenyan Xiong (ICTIR 2024 PC Chairs)
Negin Rahimi (ICTIR 2024 Proceedings Chair)
Harrie Oosterhuis (ICTIR 2024 General Chair)