FROM THE CHAIR…
As the prestige and prominence of our field increases and broadens, I think it wise for SIGIR as anorganization to think of what we might do to insure that we maintain the position of influence that wehave earned and now hold. As those of you who are regular SIGIR Conference paper submittersknow very well, the acceptance rate of papers at our annual conference is quite low (i. e.
competitive), being 16% in the last two years.
While this can be viewed very positively as an indication that SIGIR is the field’s premier, signatureprofessional conference, we as an ACM SIG need to consider whether the relative exclusivity ofSIGIR Conference acceptance is also having a negative effect on SIGIR. The issue is whether thefact that many excellent, submitted papers that are not making it into SIGIR, but are then being
accepted and presented quite credibly at other conferences that have sprung up (e.g. CIKM), is anindication that SIGIR ought to consider hosting another (or more than one other) conference a year?
Or perhaps we should consider whether to increase the number of parallel sessions, or perhaps thelength of the conference itself.
And why should we consider these options? This is partially due to the risk we take that the many
researchers whose papers or posters aren’t accepted at SIGIR, but which are favorably-reviewed andwell-received at other conferences, might lose their loyalty to SIGIR, and in fact bypass SIGIR
submission, participation, and attendance, in preference to a new loyalty to a conference which is still
stringent in its quality monitoring, but which has been more inventive in ways to be more inclusive
and accepting of all the high quality papers which are deserving of acceptance.
In the past, SIGIR has shown such openness to change when it altered its original meeting format of
only one session at a time (i. e. no parallel sessions), and no poster session – to today’s format where
there are typically 2 or 3 concurrent sessions, and an excellent poster session. Now, oughtn’t weconsider some inventive ways we could devise to broaden the participation rate at a time when weknow that our academic and commercial research, and the students we are graduating are more highly
valued than at any other time? Shouldn’t we consider the risks of not broadening participation?
While our conference is currently the one at which the richest professional exchanges occur and theone at which the best employment opportunities for our PhD students exist, can we be assured thisfavorable situation will continue, without expanding the opportunities for participation?
For example, many individuals who attended last year’s Poster Session acknowledged that the qualityof the posters was better than the papers presented at many other conferences. While this isestimable, don’t we take the risk that such high-quality poster presenters will themselves recognize
this, and rather than submit a poster to SIGIR, write this work up as a paper to submit to acompetitive conference, where they know they will have an better chance of being accepted as apaper than they do of being accepted as a poster at SIGIR?
While I am stepping down now as Chair of SIGIR, I will encourage the incoming Executive
Committee to lead the membership in a consideration of this proposal that SIGIR explore ideas thatwill expand the inclusiveness of SIGIR, such as adding a mid-year conference, or two nights of poster
sessions, or increasing the number of parallel sessions, or extending the conference by a day – or any
other inventive means that would ensure that SIGIR continues to reign as the preferred professional
conference for ALL high-quality IR research.