SIGIR is the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...

's Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval. The scope of the group's specialty is the theory and application of computers to the acquisition, organization, storage,

retrieval Retrieval could refer to: Computer science * RETRIEVE, Tymshare database that inspired dBASE and others * Data retrieval * Document retrieval * Image retrieval * Information retrieval * Knowledge retrieval * Medical retrieval * Music informati ...

and distribution of information; emphasis is placed on working with non-numeric information, ranging from

natural language In neuropsychology, linguistics, and philosophy of language, a natural language or ordinary language is any language that has evolved naturally in humans through use and repetition without conscious planning or premeditation. Natural languag ...

to highly structured data bases.

Conferences

The annual international SIGIR conference, which began in 1978, is considered the most important in the field of information retrieval. SIGIR also sponsors the annual

Joint Conference on Digital Libraries The Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) is an annual international forum focusing on digital libraries and associated technical, practical, and social issues. It is jointly sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery and the IEEE ...

(JCDL) in association with SIGWEB, the

Conference on Information and Knowledge Management The ACM Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM, pronounced ) is an annual computer science research conference dedicated to information management (IM) and knowledge management (KM). Since the first event in 1992, the conference ...

(CIKM), and the

International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining International is an adjective (also used as a noun) meaning "between nations". International may also refer to: Music Albums * ''International'' (Kevin Michael album), 2011 * ''International'' (New Order album), 2002 * ''International'' (The T ...

(WSDM) in association with

SIGKDD SIGKDD, representing the Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) Special Interest Group (SIG) on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, hosts an influential annual conference. Conference history The KDD Conference grew from KDD (Knowledge Di ...

SIGMOD SIGMOD is the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Management of Data, which specializes in large-scale data management problems and databases. The annual ACM SIGMOD Conference, which began in 1975, is considered one of ...

, and SIGWEB.

SIGIR conference locations

Awards

The group gives out several awards to contributions to the field of information retrieval. The most important award is the

Gerard Salton Award The Gerard Salton Award is presented by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval (SIGIR) every three years to an individual who has made "significant, sustained and continuing contributions to re ...

(named after the

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus ( ...

Gerard Salton Gerard A. "Gerry" Salton (8 March 1927 in Nuremberg – 28 August 1995) was a Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University. Salton was perhaps the leading computer scientist working in the field of information retrieval during his time, a ...

), which is awarded every three years to an individual who has made "significant, sustained and continuing contributions to research in information retrieval". Additionally, SIGIR presents a Best Paper Award to recognize the highest quality paper at each conference. "Test of time" Award is a recent award that is given to a paper that has had "long-lasting influence, including impact on a subarea of information retrieval research, across subareas of information retrieval research, and outside of the information retrieval research community". This award is selected from a set of full papers presented at the main SIGIR conference 10-12 years before.

SIGIR Academy

The ACM SIGIR Academy is a group of researchers honored by SIGIR. Each year, 3-5 new members are elected (in addition to other "very senior members of the IR community" who will be "automatically" inducted) for having made significant, cumulative contributions to the development of the field of information retrieval and influencing the research of others. These are the principal leaders of the field, whose efforts have shaped the discipline and/or industry through significant research, innovation, and/or service.

Inductees by year

Here are the inductees into the SIGIR Academy by year:

References

External links

*
SIGIR awards website
{{Authority control Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Groups Information retrieval organizations :Computer science awards