BUSINESS MEETING REPORTACM SIGIR Annual Business Meeting 2012:
Secretary’s Notes
Andrew Trotman
Department of Computer Science
University of Otago
Dunedin, New Zealandandrew@cs.otago.ac.nz

1

Opening Matters

The 2012 ACM SIGIR Annual Business Meeting took place on Wednesday August 15th 2012, atthe SIGIR 2012 conference in Portland, Oregon, USA. The meeting opened shortly after noon andwas led by James Allan.
The Executive Committee was introduced as: James Allan (Chair), Ian Ruthven (Vice-Chair),Andrew Trotman (Secretary), Ian Soboroff (Treasurer), and Elizabeth Liddy (Past-Chair). The
role of the Executive Committee was outlined as were the member services including: SIGIR
Forum, reduced conference registration fees for sponsored and in-cooperation conferences, accessto the ACM Digital Library, and the SIGIR-IRList electronic newsletter. Non-members who
attend the annual SIGIR conference normally become members at registration.
Thanks were then given to the many volunteers over the previous 12 months including: Djoerd
Hiemstra (Information Director), Raman Chandrasekar, Diane Kelly (SIGIR Forum editors), Mark
Smucker (SIGIR-IRList editor), Shlomo Geva (Awards Chair), and the conference liaisons: Charles
Clarke (CIKM), Ricardo Baeza-Yates (WSDM), and Edie Rasmussen (JCDL).

2

Treasurers Report

Ian Soboroff began by stating that the SIG is in a very strong financial position. Membership wasup as a consequence of the 2011 conference there are approximately 750 professional members.
Membership dues have again not increased and remain at the 2005 level. Income from this is now
a small proportion of the SIG income, about US$35,000.
Finances were then reviewed starting with a graph showing 1997-2011. The annual net profit
has continued to rise since 2009 leading to an increasing balance of (about) US$1.2 Million. A
net surplus of US$64,000 is projected for 2012, including about US$107,000 from the ACM digital
library. Expenses included US$93,000 to ACM for conference support services.
For another year the largest SIG expense has been student travel. In 2011 this was US$78,000
and in 2012 it has risen to a planned US$101,000. Methods of spending the surplus were suggested

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Vol. 46 No. 2 December 2012including spending more on travel, seeding grants, day-care at the SIGIR conference, and absorbingsome conference costs.
A comment from the floor suggested increasing travel funds to other sponsored events. The
chair outlined the complication of being a co-sponsor of an event and then being the sole providerof travel funds. This would result in SIGIR providing more that its share of financial support forthe same proportion of profits. This is equivalent to SIGIR handing funds directly to the othersponsors.

3

Business Items

Several volunteers stepped down and have been replaced. The SIG is grateful to Diane Kelly forher years of service to SIGIR Forum, she has been replaced by Fernando Diaz. The SIG is gratefulto Mark Smucker for his years of service to the SIGIR-IRList, no replacement was announced.
The SIG is grateful to Shlomo Geva for taking on the position of Awards Chair.
The current Executive Committee has just started the third year of its 3 year term, and is
not permitted to be re-elected. Nominations are sought for the new committee. Regulations
require that a nominations committee be appointed by September and this is underway1 . Nominations for the Executive Committee must be submitted to the ACM (by SIGIR) by December
3rd 20122 . Elections are in the February-June timeframe and the new committee replaced thecurrent committee at SIGIR 2013.
The new “friends of SIGIR” program was outlined. In this program small and regional events
can apply to SIGIR for student travel support. In the 2012 year this is likely to be capped at$5,000 per event. Interested events should submit information about their event, its relationshipto SIGIR, the amount requested, and the criteria for distributing the finds to the Treasurer who
administers the program.
Progress on the SIGIR Digital Museum was outlined. The museum now contains about 30
volumes amounting to 500 PDFs, or 7,500 pages.
SIGIR was a partial sponsor of the ACM Turing Centenary3 event held in San Francisco on
June 15th 16th 2012. It was represented by Keith van Rijsbergen who helped organize a panel on
Turing (rather than his work). Several new ACM Fellows were announced at the event including
long-time SIGIR supporter Amit Singhal. SIGIR congratulated him on this achievement.

4

Conferences

The meeting continued with presentations on ACM sponsored and in-cooperation events including
SIGIR, CIKM, JCDL, WSDM, and ADCS.
1

At the time of the SIGIR 2012 business meeting nominations for the nominations committee had nominallybeen nominated. At the time of writing this committee committee should be actively seeking a committee.
2
Callan (CMU) consequently commencing committee committee chairing.
3
http://turing100.acm.org

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4.1

SIGIR 2011 Report

The final numbers for SIGIR 2011 were: 543 full paper submissions (108 accepted, 19.9%); 274
short paper submissions (89 accepted, 32.5%), 8 workshops, 15 demonstrations, 11 tutorials (ofwhich 3 were later cancelled). There were 629 participants at the main conference (split about
evenly between SIGIR members, non-members, and students); 226 tutorial attendees; and 193
workshop attendees. The Microsoft Research Asia visit was attended by 358 and the industrial
tour was attended by 228.
The conference income was US$508,000, and expenditure was US$383,400. The ACM took an
overhead of US$61,600 which left a surplus of US$63,000 returned to SIGIR. An income breakdown
was given: US$346,300 from registrations, US$33,700 from tutorials, US$29,700 from workshops,
US$2,700 from exhibitors and an additional US$5,700 from miscellaneous sources. Sponsorshipaccounted for about US$90,000.
The organizing committee was thanked, including: Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Tat-Seng Chua,
Bruce Croft (Program Committee Chairs); Kevyn Collins-Thompson, Gary Geunbae Lee, Massimo
Melucci (Poster and Demo Chairs); Yi Zhang (Tutorial Chair); Noriko Kando, Luo Si (Workshop Chairs); Paul Thomas, Maarten De Rijke (Doctoral Consortium Chairs); Susan Dumais(Best Paper Award Chair); David Carmel, Haifeng Wang (Industrial Track Chairs); Gareth Jones(Mentoring Chair); Xiaoming Li (Local Organization Chair); and Jimmy Huang (Sponsorship
Chair)The sponsors were again thanked including: Microsoft, Baidu, EMC2, Google, Yahoo!, Ebay
Research Labs, HP Labs, IBM Research, Yandex, CPIS, Universit de Montral; as were the exhibitors: Morgan & Claypool Publishers, Springers, and Now. A statistical analysis on the weather
suggested that it was significantly warmer than the average low, but not significantly warmer than
the average high4 .

4.2

SIGIR 2012 Interim Report

William (Bill) Hersh presented a preliminary report on the in-progress SIGIR 2012, held at thePortland Marriott Downtown Waterfront (Portland, Oregon, USA).
As of 14th August there were: 204 SIGIR member registrations; 130 non-member registrations;
163 student registrations; and 46 complementary registrations (total 4985 of which 452 were paid).
There had been 5 industry-track-only registrations; 239 tutorial registrations; and 156 workshop
registrations.
Numbers from SIGIRs 2009-2012 were presented which suggest that tutorial registrations werein line with previous years6 , but all other registrations were down. A national break-down saw
the majority coming from USA, New Zealand has grown to 37 .
4

The temperature was higher than the average high every day of the conference except 27th July. The Secretary,
who lives in the southern hemisphere, enjoys the annual mid-winter break from the cold and damp and welcomes
more SIGIRs in warm locations. The secretary also notes that in 2014 SIGIR will be held in the southern hemisphere(and therefore winter) but sufficiently north that it will again be a warm break in the middle of winter and will
even be so for those who live in the north of Europe.
5
This was updated at the closing ceremony to “over 500”.
6
Numbers for previous years are painstakingly reported in the minutes of each business meeting (including thisvery minute).
7
Three, this is, not 2,187. In 2011 it was 2, and in 2010 it was 1. The secretary notes that the growth rate is

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The conference organizers were thanked including: Jamie Callan, Yoelle Maarek, Mark Sanderson (Program Committee Chairs); Falk Scholer, Mark Smucker, Andrew Turpin (Poster andDemo Chairs); Doug Oard (Mentoring Chair); Javed Mostafa (Treasurer); Henning Muller (Tutorial Chair); Eugene Agichtein, Vanessa Murdock (Workshops Chair); Udo Kruschwitz, Su-Lin
Wu (Industry Track Chairs); Marteen de Rijke, Mounia Lalmas (Doctoral Consortium Chairs);
ChengXiang Zhai (Best Paper Chair); Elmer Bernstam (Publications Chair); Justin Fletcher(Local Arrangements Chair); Jayashree Kalpathy-Cramer (Publicity Chair); Aaron Cohen (Sponsorships Chair); Chris Weldon (Webmaster); and Kim Lepin (Local Logistics Chair).
In total 483 full papers were submitted from which 98 (20%) were accepted. Most papers camefrom USA (36), China (14), the UK (7), Spain (7) and the Netherlands (6). 208 posters were
submitted from which 76 (36.5%) were accepted. 17 demos were accepted as were 4 workshops
and 16 tutorials (of which 7 were later canceled). Finally a topical breakdown of the papers wasgiven the “hot topics” for 2012 were “Queries and Query Analysis” along with “Retrieval Models
and Ranking”8 .
The sponsors were again thanked, including: Microsoft Research, Google, Baudu, Yahoo!
Labs, Ebay Research Labs, IBM Research, Ask, Oracle, Yandex, Morgan & Claypool Publishers,
Springer, Cambridge University Press, University of Oregon, Now, and the Oregon Health &Science University.

4.3

SIGIR 20139

Praic Sheridan & Garth Jones presented SIGIR 2013 to be held between 28th July and 1st Augustat the 400-year old Trinity College Dublin, Ireland with plenary sessions at The Mansion House,
the welcome reception at the Guinness Brewery and the banquet at Croke Park Stadium.
The organizing committee was outlined as: Gareth Jones, Praic Sheridan (General Chairs);
and Maarten de Rijke, Diane Kelly, Tetsuya Sakai (Program Committee Chairs).
Abstracts are due 21st January with full papers due 28th January. Workshop proposals aredue 4th February. Posters and demos are due 18th February. Workshop notifications will occur
on 11th March, the same day the Doctoral Consortium papers are due. All other acceptances will
occur on 15th April.

4.4

SIGIR 2014

The 37th Annual ACM SIGIR Conference will be held between 6th July and 11th July 2014 at
Australias Gold Coast. Shlomo Geva presented details on the location including climate, environs,
accommodation, and attractions. He also presented details on access including flight times from
7 previous SIGIR conferences.
Andrew Trotman outlined the organizers including: Shlomo Geva, Andrew Trotman (General
Chairs); Alistair Moffat (Treasurer); Jimmy Huang (Sponsorship Chair); Peter Bruza, Charlie
therefore 1/(n-2009) where n is the current year (using the Gregorian calendar). The sum to infinity of this is 2,
but it is not clear what this might mean.
8
The Secretary notes that together these could be described as “queries, query analysis, retrieval, and ranking”
which is reasonable, short, and succinct definition of Information Retrieval!
9
As a scientist one should be sceptical of predictions of the future. However, in the experience of the Secretary,
there does appear to be a track record of SIGIR hitting its deadlines.

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Clarke, Kal Jrvelin (Program Committee Chairs); Vanessa Murdock, Gabriella Pasi, Andrew
Turpin (Poster Chairs); Paul Thomas (Demos Chair); Falk Scholer (Tutorials Chair); Jaap Kamps,
Gabriella Kazai (Workshops Chairs); David Hawking, Isabelle Moulinier (Industry Track Chairs);
Laurianne Sitbon (Local Arrangements); Laurianne Sitbon (Publications Chair); and Richi Nayak,
Jinglan Zhang (Publicity & Webmasters)10 .

4.5

SIGIR 2015

Ricardo Baeza-Yates outlined Santiago de Chile, the successful bid for SIGIR 201511 . It will beorganized by Yahoo! Labs Santiago; University of Santiago, Chile; University of Chile; University
Federico Santa Maria; Catholic University of Chile12 . Indicative travel times (and costs) fromseveral important international locations were given13 . Indicative accommodation prices were
given, ranging from US$10 to US$350. The banquet will be at: Castillo Hidalgo. The venue
was then presented as Conference center of Catholic University of Chile. Tourist attractions were
outlined as: Valparaiso, Atacama Desert, Easter Island, and Patagonia.

4.6

SIGIR 2016 Informal Call for Bids

James Allan called for bids for SIGIR 2016 (to be located in the Europe-Africa region); formal
bids are due 15th September 2012. Fabrizio Silvestri discussed the possibility of a bid from Italy.
There was an informal suggestion of Spain and that Ricardo Baeza-Yates could be the chair thiswas met with laughter from him.

4.7

Sponsored and In-Cooperation Conferences

James Allan presented details on the SIGIR sponsored and in-cooperation conferences.
JCDL 2012 was held at the George Washington University in Washington DC. 285 attended
and the conference produced a surplus of US$25,000. JCDL 2013 will be held in Indianapolis,
Indiana, USAin July 2013. JCDL 2014 is examining the possibility of combining with Theory andPractice of Digital Libraries (TPDL).
CIKM was then outlined to the audience (the annual SIGIR & SIGWEB sponsored conference
specializing in: information retrieval, database systems, knowledge management).
CIKM 2011 (Glasgow) saw 918 paper submissions and 134 accepted (15%), and another 93 as
short papers, and another 98 as posters (a total acceptance rate of 35%). There were 220 poster
submissions of which 66 were accepted. There were 10 tutorials, 15 workshops, a panel on Social
and Collaborative Search, and an industry day. The event was attended by 700. EMC2, Google,
and CrossRefNews where thanked for providing travel funds.
CIKM 2012 (Maui, 29th October 2nd November), is being chaired by Xue-wen Chen with
program chairs: Guy Lebanon (IR), Mohammed Zaki (KM), Haixun Wang (DB). There were10

Subsequently Mounia Lalmas has been added as the Awards Chair.
Much to the secretarys disappointment, there appeared to be opposition to a SIGIR-Antarctica, perhaps due
to a lack of a suitable venue.
12
Baeza-Yates clearly has the priorities correct: how to get there, where to stay, the banquet, the conference,then tourism.
13
Including 11:30 hours non-stop from Auckland at a cost of US$2,192.
11

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1088 full paper submissions of which 146 (13%) were accepted and 157 (14%) were accepted as
short papers. There were 229 poster submissions of which 71 were accepted. Of these 56 were
Information Retrieval papers and 64 were Information Retrieval short papers. Sponsors Microsoft,
Ebay Research Labs, Yahoo! Labs, IBM Research, Yandex, and Adobe were thanked.
CIKM 2013 will be held in San Francisco, California, USA, and chaired by Arun Iyengar and Qi
He. The organizing committee was outlined as Jian Pei, Wolfgang Nejdl, Rajeev Rastogi (Program
Committee Chairs), Jiawei Han (Awards Chair), and Brian Johnson (Industry Day Chair). The
event will be sponsored by IBM Research, Ebay Research Labs, Facebook, Amazon.com, andACM SIGIR and ACM SIGWEB.
CIKM 2014 (and beyond) proposals-to-host should be submitted to David Grossman.
WSDM 2012 saw 334 attendees (an increase of 43% on the 234 seen in 2011 (222 seen in 2010));the split was 43% academic, 57% industry. 75 papers were accepted (20.7%); 30 were presented
as full papers (20 minute talks) and 45 were accepted as “spotlights” (4 minute talks).
WSDM 2013 will be held in Rome, Italy, February 4th 8th. The organizing committee wasoutlined as: Stefano Leonardi, Alessandro Panconesi (General Chairs); Paolo Ferragina, Aristides
Gionis (Program Committee Chairs); Sebastiano Vigna (Workshop Chair); Paolo Boldi (Tutorial
Chair, and Data Challenge Chair); Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Fabrizio Silvestri (Doctoral Consortium Chairs); and Aris Anagnostopoulos, Luca Becchetti, Flavio Chierichetti (Local Organization
Chairs). Sigh-seeing possibilities were outlined.
In-cooperation events did include and will include: RecSys 2011, AIRS 2011, ECIR 2012,
UMAP 2012, IIiX 2012, ECIR 2013.
ADCS (the Australian Document Computing Symposium) is expected to become an in-cooperation
event in 2013. Due to an inexplicable ACM regulation, events that have been accepted into the
ACM Digital Library are not permitted to apply for in-cooperation status even if supported by a
SIG. The ADCS organizers were careful to ensure their papers would appear in the digital library
before seeking sponsorship and support (the natural course of action). Unfortunately this excluded
SIGIR from directly supporting the event despite support from the SIGIR Executive Committee.
ADCS 2012 is expected to be the first SIGIR-friend event, and ADCS 2013 is expected to be afull in-cooperation event.
ADCS 2012 will be held December 5th 6th at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
It is being supported by Google, NICTA, the University of Otago, and most probably SIGIR14 .
Papers will appear in the ACM digital library.

5

Discussion

James Allan chaired a discussion on a broad collection issues. Discussion from the floor is summarized below15 .
Several suggestions on how to spend the SIGIR surplus were raised. Once again it was suggested
that a “test of time” award be created. The awards chair (Shlomo Geva) will look into thisfurther. The possibility of creating travel grants for those coming from developing countries was
14

Subsequently, Bing and Funnelback have joined as sponsors.
In an effort to avoid unnecessary formality, and to increase readability, the topics of discussion are not duly
attributed. Please accept this as a necessary compromise.
15

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suggested16 . There was no direct opposition, however the utilization of such a fund was questioned.
An alternative suggestion was to run the SIGIR conference in such a location and to attract local
students (Cairo and Cape Town were suggested). Again the possibility of day care at the SIGIR
conference was raised.
Open access journal publishing was again raised. SIGIR Forum is already open access, butdoes not publish primary research. ACM TOIS is not open access and not run by the SIG.
The ongoing issues with the SIGIR conference banquet were also discussed. In short, it isexpensive, noisy, does not increase cross fertilization of ideas, and is no longer a highlight of
SIGIR. Several suggestions were made including making it optional (the consequence of which
would be student (and some academic) exclusion by their institute). Baeza-Yates suggest it beturned into a dance17 . SIGIR 2014 is considering replacing the banquet with a second poster
session a show of hands lent strong support to doing so.
Again the suggestion of ensuring that the SIGIR sponsored and in-cooperation events werespread around the globe rather than clumped was raised. The problem is that each conference
has an organizing committee who chooses where the next conference will be held without consultation with the other conferences and so it is possible for, for example, CIKM and SIGIR to begeographically near each other some years while also being far from some Information Retrieval
hubs (such as Europe). SIGIR does not, currently, believe it is in a position to impose geographic
requirements on these conferences.

6

Conclusion

James Allan concluded the meeting with thanks at 1:56pm.

16

The Donald B. Crouch Travel Grant (due to a donation made by the Singhal Family Charitable Fund) provides
travel support for students.
17
The Secretary presumes this was humour.

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