From the Chair….
Greetings SIGIR members! It has been a busy six months, so let’s get right to it….

SIGIR is Healthy
SIGIR membership increased 6.4% last year, to just over 1,300 members. SIGIR had
income of US $377K and expenses of US $365K, for a profit of US $12K during the last
fiscal year, and a fund balance of US $455K. At the SIGIR Business Meeting I reported
a small loss for the year, based on ACM estimates. However, when ACM closed thebooks, income was higher and expenses were lower than estimated. Lucky us!

SIGIR 2004 Was a Success
SIGIR 2004 was the largest European SIGIR conference, with attendance of 381, 58
papers, 8 tutorials, and 10 workshops. We thank General Chair Mark Sanderson, Local
Arrangements Chair Peter Willet, and Treasurer Micheline Beaulieu for their hard work.
We particularly thank them for having workshops in the Arts Tower, with its paternoster
lifts; no trip to Sheffield would be complete without that experience.
We also thank the Program Chairs Kalervo Järvelin, James Allan, and Peter Bruza ; Poster
Chair Gareth Jones; Workshops Chair Mounia Lalmas; Tutorials Chair Fabio Crestani;
Demos Chair Ian Ruthven; Mentoring Chair Doug Oard; and Best Papers Chair John Taitfor putting together an excellent technical program. Special thanks goes to David Harperfor organizing a very successful Doctoral Consortium.

SIGIR 2008 in Asia
At the SIGIR Business Meeting groups from Singapore and the People’s Republic ofChina announced that they would bid to host SIGIR 2008. Whichever site is selected,
2008 will be the first Asian SIGIR conference. Be sure to check the next issue of Forum!

In Cooperation Conferences
CIVR 2005 and CORIA 2005 will both be held “in cooperation” with SIGIR. When aconference is “in cooperation” with SIGIR, SIGIR members get the lowest registration
rate. Check the http://www.sigir.org/ Web site before you register for an IR-related
conference. If it is “in cooperation” with SIGIR, be sure to mention your SIGIR
membership when you register for the conference.

Preserving Our History
Although IR is a young field, it is already losing its memory. Important early IR papers
and reports are becoming increasingly difficult to find. SIGIR is exploring the possibilityof collecting and preserving early IR research, in English, and in other languages. We
need two types of help: i) ideas about what to save, how to organize it, and how topreserve it; and ii) volunteers to help with the work. David Lewis is coordinating thiseffort. Contact him at secretary_sigir@acm.org if you want to get involved.

New SIGIR Conference Policies
The number of submissions to the SIGIR conference has increased dramatically. In
response to requests from recent Program Chairs, the SIGIR Executive Committee has
adopted the following policies for the SIGIR conference. These take effect for 2005.
•SIGIR will strictly enforce page-based length restrictions on papers submitted to theconference. Submitted papers must be in the camera-ready format for the previous
year or the current year. If the paper is too long, it will be rejected without review.

•SIGIR policy for many years has been that papers submitted to the SIGIR conference
may not be under review elsewhere during the SIGIR review period. Such duplicate
submissions are rejected automatically. In spite of this policy, duplicate submissions
continue to be a problem. Beginning in 2005 the authors of duplicate submissionswill not be permitted to submit papers or posters to the SIGIR conference in thefollowing year.

•Individuals may organize only one workshop per SIGIR conference. If someone isincluded in more than one workshop proposal, neither workshop will be approved.

•Workshop Chairs are expected to attend their workshops. When Chairs do not attend
their own workshops, it undermines the credibility of the event.

Executive Committee Terms Extended
A SIG’s Executive Committee can request to have its term extended from 2 years to 4years without holding an election. Most recent SIGIR ECs have exercised this option, inpart to save SIGIR the cost of holding an election (about US $2000), and in part because
it seems silly to step down just when the officers have learned their jobs.
This EC asked Past Chair Susan Dumais to lead a discussion at the SIGIR BusinessMeeting about whether this EC should have its term extended. Sue reported that the vote
was strongly in favor of asking the EC to continue. In August we requested to have ourterms extended. In September the SIG Governing Board approved our request.
If you disagree with this decision, there is a petition process to force an election. See
Communications of the ACM, or contact Ginger Ignatoff at ACM (ignatoff@hq.acm.org).
As always, we value your opinion. If you have ideas about how SIGIR can be improved,
please let me know by email.
Best wishes for the new year!
Jamie Callan (chair_sigir@acm.org)