BUSINESS MEETING REPORTACM SIGIR Annual Business Meeting 2015:
Secretary’s Notes
Jaap Kamps
University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Email: secretary_SIGIR@acm.org

1

Opening Matters

The 2015 ACM SIG-IR Annual Business Meeting took place on Thursday August 12, 2015, atthe SIGIR’15 Conference in Santiago, Chili.1 The meeting proper started at 12:50 and was led by
SIG-IR chair Charlie Clarke.
The ACM SIG-IR executive committee was introduced, consisting of Charles L.A. (Charlie)
Clarke (chair), Yoelle Maarek (vice chair, unable to attend), Jaap Kamps (secretary), Diane Kelly(treasurer, arriving with delay due to a late session end), and James Allan (past chair). Charlie
explained the role of the SIG-IR executive committee. First, to ensures continued high quality andreputation of SIGIR and its sponsored conferences (with new sponsored conferences announced
later in the meeting). Second, to meets the needs of SIGIR’s members, by staying tuned tochanging needs and preferences of members, both new and experienced. Third, to ensure financial
stability of SIG-IR and high-visibility presence within the ACM. On the latter point, Charlie ispart of the SIG Governing Board and represents our views on important issues, such as the futureof the ACM DL.
Charlie thanked the many volunteers, including the 1,000s of volunteers running SIG-IR sponsored and co-sponsored conferences in various roles. The SIG-level volunteers were thanked: Krisztian Balog (information director), Guido Zuccon (social media director), Jaime Arguello (student
travel awards chair), Craig Macdonald, Ben Carterette (June and December issue SIGIR Forumeditors), Claudia Hauff (SIG-IRList editor) , Fernando Diaz (awards chair), Jimmy Lin (CIKM
liaison), Ricardo Baeza-Yates (WSDM liaison), and Edie Rasmussen (JCDL liaison).
The SIG-IR website, at http://sigir.org/, is the main source of information about SIG-IR
with content being updated and expanded in the coming year. There are many member services
and benefits, including: SIGIR Forum, reduced conference fees for sponsored and “in cooperation”
conferences, access to the ACM digital library, the SIG-IRList newsletter, and special events andstudents support. Non-members who attend the SIGIR conference receive a one-year membershipwith their conference registration, with the hope that they continue their membership in SIG-IR
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The business meeting of the ACM Special Interest Group on IR, here written as SIG-IR to distinguish the
ACM SIG from its annual SIGIR conference.

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in the next year. Editor’s note: Signing up as member, or continuing your membership, costs only
$15 per year for students and $30 per year for seniors, see the details at http: // sigir. org/
general-information/ membership/ .
Charlie stressed the importance of student travel support with the introduction of the SIGIR student travel grant program discussed below. There is additional support at the SIGIR
conference from the Donald B. Crouch Travel Grants and Google Travel Grants. In addition, thereis the “friends” program that supports events related to SIG-IR’s mission, see http://sigir.org/
general-information/funding-for-sigir-related-events/ for details. The budget for 2015
was over $35,000, and current friends include: ADCS, ESSIR, FIRE, NACLO, MediaEval, andDIR.
Last, but not least, SIG-IR organizes special events, again this year the business meeting lunch,and the second ACM SIGIR Student Luncheon, and the first ACM SIGIR Student Get Together(aka student party). The luncheon is a student-only event that is open to all student attendees.
There were flash talks by Nick Belkin, Emine Yilmaz, and Jaime Teevan on doing research andcareer trajectories, and leading members of SIGIR acted as “table captains.” By request of thestudents, this year saw in addition the ACM SIGIR Student Get Together organized by Laura
Dietz, where students meet and can talk informally to seniors—with the seniors paying for the
consumptions of the students. The student party was a “secret” social event, but was very wellattended also by seniors, as nothing stays a secret for long in the age of social media.

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Treasurer’s Report

SIG-IR treasurer Diane Kelly took over and reported that the SIG’s finances are very healthy,
with SIG reserves of about $1.5 million, well above the ACM requirement to have enough reservesto cover a SIGIR conference.
As for the SIG expenses, the ACM overhead is no longer largest expense ($119,000 in 2014),
given the increase in student travel grants to SIGIR ($125,000 in 2015, plus $10,000 Donald Crouch
grants, bringing 56 students from 19 countries to SIGIR). Although an expense, the SIG is very
happy about the increasing number of grants, which will grow further in the new ACM SIGIR
Student Travel Grant Program starting in September 2015. This new program funds student
presenters traveling to all ACM SIG-IR sponsored and co-sponsored conferences. The budgetof $250,000 is allocated as a function of past attendance and sponsorship level, in the following way: CIKM ($71,000, 90 students funded); ICTIR ($20,000, 15 students funded); WSDM($13,000); CHIIR ($20,000); JCDL ($17,000); and SIGIR ($92,000). Program is administeredby SIG-IR, see http://sigir.org/general-information/travel-grants/ for details. The application windows opens for about 2 weeks after notifications, with information included in the
notification messages, and our policy is to fund every eligible student who applies. Jaime Arguelloadministers the programs as student travel award chair.
In addition SIG-IR sponsors related events with a small amounts of funding (max. $5,000)
through the “friends” program ($31,000 in 2014, $28,000 in 2015). This allows SIG-IR to fundin-cooperation and other related conferences. We take applications on a quarterly basis.
SIG-IR underwrites as a (co)sponsor five conferences in 2015: SIGIR (100%), ICTIR (100%,
inaugural conference in 2015), CHIIR (100%, inaugural conference in 2016), CIKM (50%), JCDL
(33%) and WSDM (25%) and shares in their profits or losses. ACM requires conferences to budget
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conservatively with the goal to break even—but in practice almost all conferences make a profit.
There is also income from other sources: most notable is the digital library (almost $130,000
in 2014), and smaller amounts from dues, interest, and subscriptions. Overall, non-conference
income continues to rise. Income from dues is low (about $7,000) with a stable membership ofaround 800, but this is no issue financially given the high digital library and conference income.

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AwardsCharlie introduces the “Test of Time” award, and explains the procedure: For the 2015 ACM
SIG-IR Test of Time award, papers from 2003–2005 qualified and a committee consisting of PC
Chair from SIGIRs 2008, 2012, and 2014 (with Fernando Diaz as non-voting chair) selected thepaper that had the most impact. In addition to the certificate, the winning paper is republished in
SIGIR Forum. Additional honorable mentions can be selected from the year falling off, i.e. 2003.
Editor’s note: This year the Test of Time Award went to Susan Dumais, Edward Cutrell, J.
J. Cadiz, Gavin Jancke, Raman Sarin, and Daniel C. Robbins for their paper Stuff I’ve seen: asystem for personal information retrieval and re-use from SIGIR 2003. Three further papers from
SIGIR 2003 received received a honorable mention: Document clustering based on non-negative
matrix factorization by Wei Xu, Xin Liu, and Yihong Gong; Automatic image annotation andretrieval using cross-media relevance models by J. Jeon, V. Lavrenko, and R. Manmatha; Modelingannotated data by David M. Blei and Michael I. Jordan.
We are open to nominations of papers from SIGIR 2004–2006 which eligible for the Test ofTime award in 2016. Top 5 in citations are auto-nominated, but any member can nominate further
papers to be considered, see the details at http://sigir.org/awards/test-of-time-awards/,
or contact the Awards Chair Fernando Diaz.
Charlie Clarke added that there is a separate project for the years up to 2002. In addition
to the Test of Time award, we work on recognizing papers before the first Test of Time Award
window, i.e. SIGIR 2002. Keith van Rijsbergen is leading this effort, and we will report in detailon this at SIGIR 2016.

4

SIGIR Elections 2016–2019

The three year term of the current executive committee is ending at June 30, 2016, and new
officers will start on July 1, 2016. Please vote and consider running for one of the positions in theexecutive committee for this or future terms. The new executive committee will take over justbefore SIGIR 2016, and be in charge of the next business meeting. So it is like a car blasting down
the road at full speed, and the turns are coming up, and someone hands you the steering wheel
and tells you to take over... All these roles are immensely interesting, and this group moved byconsensus, which involved lots of email and also lots of interesting discussion. So please consider
to run for one of the roles and talk to Jamie Callan who is chairing the nomination committee forthe 2016–2019 executive committee.

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Conferences

This part of the business meeting had a stream of presentations of conferences that are sponsoredor organized in cooperation with SIG-IR.

5.1

SIGIR Co-Sponsored Conferences

Charlie presented co-sponsored (JCDL, CIKM, WSDM) and in-cooperation conferences.
Joint Conference on Digital Libraries JCDL’14 was a joint TPDL/JCDL conference heldfrom September 9–12, 2014 in London, UK. There were in total 313 attendees, and the conference
returned a profit. JCDL’15 was held from June 23–27, 2015 in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA. There
were a total of 132 attendees, and a modest profit is predicted. JCDL’16 will be held from June
19–23, 2016 at Rutgers in Newark, New Jersey, USA. JCDL is soliciting bids for JCDL’17 andbeyond, please contact Michael Nelson (JCDL SC chair) if you are interested. Further information
about JCDL is at http://jcdl.org/ or contact JCDL liaison Edie Rasmussen.
Conference on Information and Knowledge Management CIKM’14 was held from November 3–7 in Shanghai, China. The organization committee includes Jianzhong Li and X. Sean Wangas general chairs, and Ian Soboroff and Torsten Suel as IR track chairs. CIKM’15 will be held from
October 19–23, 2015 in Melbourne, Australia. The organization committee includes James Bailey
and Alistair Moffat as general chairs, and Vanessa Murdock and Maarten de Rijke as IR track
chair. CIKM’16 will be held from October 24–28, 2016 in Indianapolis, USA. The organizationcommittee includes Snehasis Mukhopadhyay and ChengXiang Zhai as general chairs, and Fabio
Crestani and Luo Si as IR track chair. CIKM’17 will be held in Singapore. The organization
includes Ee-Peng Lim and Marianne Winslet as general chairs. The CIKM steering committee
is soliciting bids to organize CIKM’18 and beyond, contact Jimi Shanahan (CIKM SC chair) if
you are interested. Further information about CIKM is at http://www.cikmconference.org/ orcontact CIKM liaison Jimmy Lin.
Web Search and Data Mining WSDM’14 was held from February 24–28, 2014 in New York
City, New York, USA. WSDM’15 was held in from February 2–6, 2015 in Shanghai, China.
WSDM’16 will be held from February 22–25, 2016 in San Francisco, California, USA. WSDM’18
will be in North America. The WSDM steering committee is soliciting bids to organize WSDM’18
and beyond, see http://www.wsdm-conference.org/ and contact Ricardo Baeza-Yates (WSDM
SC chair).
In Cooperation Conferences In 2015, the “in cooperation” conferences were: ADCS, AIRS,
FIRE, RecSys, and UMAP. See http://sigir.org/general-information/sponsorship/ on details and privileges of becoming an “in cooperation” conference with SIG-IR.

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5.2

ACM ICTIRCharlie noted that we have two new fully sponsored conferences starting in the next 12 months.
The first is the ACM SIGIR International Conference on the Theory of Information Retrieval(ICTIR).
Oren Kurland (ICTIR SC chair) took the stage and explained that ICTIR focuses on foundational aspects of information retrieval. ICTIR 2015 will be held from September 27–30, 2015 in
Northampton, Massachusetts, USA. The organization committee includes James Allan and Bruce
Croft as general chairs, and Arjen de Vries and ChengXiang Zhai as program chairs. A total of
53 papers (31 full and 22 short papers) were accepted to be presented in a single track. ICTIR2016 will be held from September 11–15, 2015 in Newark, Delaware, USA. The organization committee includes Ben Carterette and Hui Fang as general chairs, and Mounia Lalmas and Jian-Yun
Nie as program chairs. The ICTIR steering committee is soliciting bids to organize ICTIR’17
and beyond, see http://sigir.org/general-information/hosting-ictir/ and contact Oren
Kurland (ICTIR SC chair).

5.3

ACM CHIIRCharlie took over again announced the ACM SIGIR Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (CHIIR, pronounced as “cheer”). CHIIR represents merger of the HCIR andIIiX conferences, sponsored by SIG-IR and supported by SIG-CHI. The first annual CHIIR conference, CHIIR 2016, will be held in March 13–17, 2016 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA. The
organization committee includes Diane Kelly and Rob Capra as general chairs, and Nick Belkin,
Jaime Teevan, and Pertti Vakkari as program chairs. CHIIR 2017 will be held in March 7–11,
2017 in Oslo, Norway. The organization committee includes Ragnar Nordlie and Nils Pharo as
general chairs. The CHIIR steering committee is soliciting bids to organize CHIIR’18 and beyond, see http://chiir.org/ and http://sigir.org/general-information/hosting-chiir/
and contact Ryen White (CHIIR SC chair).

5.4

ACM SIGIR

Next on the agenda was the SIGIR conference itself, or officially called the international ACM
SIGIR conference on Research & Development in Information Retrieval.
5.4.1

SIGIR 2014 Report

Andrew Trotman and Shlomo Geva (general chairs) presented the final report on SIGIR’14 heldfrom July 6–11, 2014 in Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. A total of 387 full papers were
submitted of which 82 (21%) were accepted, 263 short papers were submitted of which 104 (40%)
were accepted, and 34 demo’s were submitted of which 16 (47%) were accepted. In addition, 7
tutorials were accepted out of 17 submissions, 7 workshops were accepted out of 11 submissions,and 8 students were accepted at the doctoral consortium out of 11 submissions. A total of 414
delegates registered representing 32 countries, including 125 student registrations. Despite thechallenges of running a SIGIR conference at an expensive and far away location, SIGIR’14 madea profit of US $62,000.

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5.4.2SIGIR 2015 Interim report

Ricardo Baeza-Yates presented an interim report on the ongoing SIGIR’15 to be held from August
9–13, 2015 in Santiago de Chile. The organization committee included the presenter as generalchair, and Berthier Ribeiro-Neto, Mounia Lalmas, and Alistair Moffat as program chairs. A totalof 341 attendees registered, of which 334 attended the main conference. The preliminary budget
shows a surplus of at least $100,000. Charlie thanked Ricardo for running an excellent conference,and in particular noted Ricardo’s dancing skills at the excellent banquet.
5.4.3

SIGIR 2016 Update

Fabrizio Sebastiani presented SIGIR’16 to be held from July 17–21, 2016 in Pisa, Italy. The
organization committee includes Fabrizio Sebastiani and Raffaele Perego as conference chairs, andJaved Aslam, Ian Ruthven, and Justin Zobel as program chairs. The venue will be the conference
center “palazzo dei congressi” in Pisa, located just 2 kilometers from Pisa airport, hence everythingis walking distance in 2016. SIGIR 2016 will replace the large poster session with several thematic
poster sessions, running in parallel to the sessions and overlapping with the coffee breaks. The
banquet will be held at the famous Charterhouse, and there are optional wine tasting tours andopera visits. In line with Ricardo’s dance demonstration, Fabrizio promised to consider to singsome opera at the banquet.
5.4.4

SIGIR 2017 Update

Noriko Kando presented SIGIR’17 to be held August 7–11, 2017 in Tokyo, Japan. Noriko Kando,
Tetsuya Sakai, and Hideo Joho will be the general chairs, and Ryen White, Hang Li, and Arjen
de Vries will be the program chairs. The venu will be the Kelo Plaza hotel in the heart of Tokyo.
It was stressed how affordable Japan is nowadays, with options that suit any budget.
5.4.5

SIGIR 2018 Announcement

Charlie took the stage and officially announced the location of SIGIR’18. We received three strong
proposals that all were financially viable and had different strengths. Eventually the preference
was for a college setting: SIGIR’18 will be in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Kevyn Collins-Thompson presented SIGIR’18 to be held July 8–13 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Ann Arbor is the home of the University of Michigan, and located a 25 minute shuttle rideaway from Detroit Metro Airport, a main domestic and international airline hub. Despite Ann
Arbor’s moderate size of 115,000 inhabitants, it has “big city sophistication,” in terms of hotels
and accommodation, dining and nightlife, and cultural attractions. The organization committee
includes Kevyn, Qiaozhu Mei, and Dragomir Radev as general chairs. The organization is looking
at several on campus venues, such as the Michigan League conference center. Kevyn is looking
forward to hosting us in Ann Arbor in 2018.
5.4.6

SIGIR 2019 Informal Bids

Charlie took the stage, and announced that the SIG-IR is asking for bids for SIGIR’19 to beheld in Europe. He asked for “informal bids” with formal bids were due on September 15, as

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stipulated on http://sigir.org/general-information/hosting-sigir/. No less than three
informal bids were made.
Emine Yilmaz presented a bid to host SIGIR’19 in Istanbul, Turkey, with her and Adnan Yazici
as conference chairs. Istanbul connects Europe and Asia, and is one of the historical centers ofcivilization. The organization team has organized successful conferences in Istanbul, and proposesa hotel/conference center venue such as the Harbiye or the Hilton in the heart of the city.
Benjamin Piwowarski presented a bid to host SIGIR’19 in Paris, France, with him and M.
Chevalier and Eric Gaussier as general chairs, backed up by the French IR community organizedin ARIA. Paris is a major metropole, but with a compact city center. The venue is a conference
hotel such as the Marriott, in the heart of Paris.
Jaap Kamps and Maarten de Rijke presented a bid to host SIGIR’19 in Rotterdam, The
Netherlands, with the two of them acting as general chairs, and backed up by the Dutch-Belgian
IR community—in a country with the highest density of IR researchers per capita in the world.
Rotterdam is famous for its skyline with the harbor and modern architecture. The venue will be
the centrally located world trade center.
Charlie continued and asked the audience for their preferences: Istanbul got about about 1/2of the raised hands, Paris got slightly less, and Rotterdam got also about 1/2 of the raised hands.
There was no clear preference in favor of, or against, any of the informal bids.

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Conclusion

As sessions were about to start again, and Charlie Clarke concluded the business meeting with
thanks to all attendees at 14:20.

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