7th Workshop on Large-Scale Distributed Systems for Information Retrieval (LSDS-IR'09)
http://lsdsir09.isti.cnr.it/

Summary
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The Web is continuously growing. Currently, there are more than 20 billions pages (some sources suggest 100 billions), compared to less than 1 billion documents in 1998. Traditionally, Web-scale search engines employ large and highly replicated systems, operating on computer clusters in one or few data centers. Coping with the increasing number of user requests and indexable pages requires adding more resources. However, data centers cannot grow indefinitely. Scalability problems in information retrieval have to be addressed in the near future, and new distributed applications are likely to drive the way in which people use the Web. Distributed IR is the point in which these two directions converge. This workshop will provide space for researchers to discuss these problems and to define new directions for the work on distributed information retrieval.

Workshop Activities and Goals
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The workshop aims to bring together researchers from the domains of IR and databases working on peer-to-peer information systems and to foster closer collaboration that could have a large impact on future research directions in the area of distributed and P2P IR.

Topics
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Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
*Novel P2P IR applications/architectures
*Retrieval models for distributed and P2P IR
*Heterogeneous distributed data integration and organization
*Query routing in distributed environments
*Distributed ranking
*Distributed index structures
*Efficiency in distributed and P2P IR
*Scalability of distributed indexing and retrieval
*Multimedia retrieval for distributed and P2P IR
*Distributed indexing and retrieval of dynamic information sources
*Standards / benchmarks for P2P IR
*Grid IR
*Decentralized reputation management
*Distributed data provenance
*Tools for distributed IR

Workshop Chairs
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Claudio Lucchese, National Research Council - ISTI, Italy
Gleb Skobeltsyn, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland
Wai Gen Yee, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA

Steering Committee
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Flavio Junqueira, Yahoo! Research Barcelona, Spain
Fabrizio Silvestri, ISTI-CNR, Italy
Ivana Podnar Zarko, University of Zagreb, Croatia

Program Committee
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Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Yahoo! Research Barcelona, Spain
Gregory Buehrer, Microsoft Live Labs, USA
Roi Blanco, University of A Coruna, Spain
Ophir Frieder, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA
Flavio Junqueira, Yahoo! Research Barcelona, Spain
Claudio Lucchese, ISTI-CNR, Italy
Sebastian Michel, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland
Wolfgang Nejdl, University of Hannover, Germany
Kjetil Norvag, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
Salvatore Orlando, University of Venice, Italy
Josiane Xavier Parreira, Max-Planck-Institut Informatik, Germany
Raffaele Perego, ISTI-CNR, Italy
Diego Puppin, Google, USA
Fabrizio Silvestri, ISTI-CNR, Italy
Gleb Skobeltsyn, EPFL, Switzerland
Torsten Suel, Polytechnic University, USA
Christos Tryfonopoulos, Max-Planck-Institut Informatik, Germany
Wai Gen Yee, Illinois Institute of Technology, USA
Ivana Podnar Zarko, University of Zagreb, Croatia
Pavel Zezula, Masaryk University of Brno, Czech Republic

Workshop Format
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The workshop solicits scientific papers that address problems specific to IR in heterogeneous and distributed environments. Additionally, position papers outlining interesting new research domains and approaches are welcome. The selection of papers is based primarily on their potential to influence future research. Papers have to present original contributions not concurrently submitted elsewhere.

Paper Submission
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Papers should not exceed 8 pages, double column, including figures, tables and references in the standard ACM Conference style (for LaTeX, use the "Option 2" style). Papers have to present original research contributions not concurrently submitted elsewhere, and must be submitted electronically in printable PDF format (other formats will be rejected) via the online submission system. Submitted papers will undergo a peer review process by at least three members of the program committee.

At least one author of an accepted paper must register for the workshop. Registration must be done at the time when the author sends the camera-ready copy of the paper.

Best papers will be considered for publication on a special issue of an international journal.

Important Dates
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Paper submission: June 15, 2009
Notification: June 27, 2009
Camera-ready papers: July 4, 2009
Workshop date: July 23, 2009