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The ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval has been experiencing significant growth over the past few years. In 2023, SIGIR received a total of 822 full paper submissions and 1,787 papers/proposals. This has brought several challenges to the conference program organization. This article reports some of the main aspects of the work conducted by the program committee (PC) co-chairs for SIGIR 2023, and discusses emergent issues of the review process and program design. We expect that this document serve as a reference for future PC co-chars and as a starting point for further discussions towards improving the review process and overall conference experience. Date: 23--27 July 2023. Website: https://sigir.org/sigir2023/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses computational methods utilized in the peer review process. It examines the availability of data in peer review, and experimentation in peer review design. It also discusses author identity bias, overall subjectivity in peer review, and author incentives.

As the field of artificial intelligence (AI) continues to expand, concerns arise about a potential surge in irrelevant scientific papers, with increasing AI-assisted writing potentially challenging citation metrics and peer review processes. This shift highlights the need to rethink evaluation methods, focusing more on impactful problem-solving rather than just publication quantity.

The article reports on research which was conducted to investigate papers which were submitted to conferences of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) between 1996 and 2009 and to evaluate trends and influences on women’s authorship of computing-conference papers. Researchers found that the number of ACM conference papers grew from 1966 to 2009. They also found that while women remain severely underrepresented in computing, there was a substantial increase in their share of papers that they published. They concluded that the increase may be due to the fact that women earned more Ph.D. degrees in computing.

The article focuses on electronic paper technology for use in consumer electronic devices, such as electronic books. The author mentions that the biggest technological challenge is the electronic paper color displays. He suggests that new technology is necessary to render better-quality color inexpensively as well as to show moving images and other displays. The author discusses research into electronic paper technology including that by Prime View International, the company that manufactures the Amazon Kindle; Plastic Logic; and Philips Research.

The article discusses research on whether computer science (CS) conferences are open to papers from outsiders. Topics include the notion of CS conferences as closed communities in relation to shared cultures, processes for review of paper proposals, and the possibility of mentoring programs for young researchers.

The article presents the results of a study which investigated the correlation between the acceptance rate and impact rating of conference papers in the field of computer science. The papers with the highest impact ratings were found to be associated with highly selective conferences, defined as those which rejected between 70 and 85 percent of papers submitted. Such papers, on average, had higher impact ratings than papers which were published in journals without being presented at conferences. A rejection rate of 85 percent or more tended to suppress submission levels and reduce impact factors, while an acceptance rate over 30 percent was associated with less prestigious conferences.

The authors report on awards given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for student research papers in computer science. They mention the number of awards presented by the ACM Europe Council, the aim of the awards to foster and recognize excellence in computer science, and both short- and long-term impacts of the awards.

The article offers suggestions for writing a rebuttal when one has submitted a paper to an academic conference and has received a response indicating that revisions are required for the possible acceptance of the paper.

This research article examines the conference review rebuttal process, which is an opportunity for researchers to answer specific questions and/or address general concerns peer reviewers have about their research, and whether rebuttal ultimately affects the approval/rejection decision in conference acceptance. The authors review data from five conferences in the computing science field and present their findings as well as a brief look into alternative refereeing processes.

This article discusses the reuse of research results in the field of software engineering and how it can be quantified to indicate the health of the field overall. Topics include how the authors generated and applied their reuse graphs to published research in software engineering and the value of these graphs. The authors ask the software engineering community to use open source tools and work within the community to share artifacts from published research to allow for reproduction of research results.

The 46th European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR 2024) was held in Glasgow, Scotland, during 24th-28th March 2024. The conference brought together over four hundred researchers from the UK, Europe and abroad. ECIR 2024 was a fully in-person conference with a total of 417 attendees, the largest number of in-person attendees of any ECIR. The conference received over 700 submissions, not including submissions to the workshops (280 Full Paper and 184 Short paper submissions). ECIR 2024 introduced a number of novelties, including a new Findings track, an IR4Good track, a new innovation called the "Collab-athon" to foster collaborations within the community, and the Keith van Rijsbergen Award to recognise researchers who have made significant contributions in using theory to advance the field of information retrieval. This report details the conference programme and events. Date: 24--28 March 2024. Website: https://www.ecir2024.org. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents blog postings on the topics of scientific papers at conferences and the problem of monitoring and paying for productivity from telecommuting computer programmers.

The article focuses on DigitalDesk, which is a real physical desk where one can stack papers, lay out their favorite pencils and markers, and leave coffee cup, but it is enhanced to provide some characteristics of an electronic workstation. A computer display is projected onto the desk, and video cameras pointed down at the desk feed an image-processing system that can sense what the user is doing. Three important characteristics of DigitalDesk are, it projects electronic images down onto the desk and onto paper documents, it responds to interaction with pens or bare fingers and it can read paper documents placed on the desk. The DigitalDesk provides a computer-augmented environment in which paper gains electronic properties that allow it to overcome some of its physical limitations. The calculator is a simple and familiar application that can benefit from the DigitalDesk. It allows people to place ordinary paper documents on the desk and simply point at a printed number to enter it into the calculator.

The article discusses how the field of computer science and computer sciences can utilize technological innovations to improve the public's trust in the results of elections. It examines hacking, election forensics, and voting system testing mechanisms. The article also discusses the processes associated with election audits and recounts, oversight by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA), and cryptography.

The article discusses the need for ethical considerations in computer network measurement papers so authors can justify ethical foundations for experimental methodologies. It covers the evolution of the field of ethics, the ability to extract information from measurement data, and legal issues related to network measurement.

This paper reports on the 45th European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR 2023), held in Dublin, Ireland, during April 2--6, 2023. The conference was the largest ECIR ever, and brought together hundreds of researchers from Europe and abroad. For those who like numbers: First, we received 489 submissions in total (including 228 full and 153 short papers) excluding further workshop submissions. Second, the technical program committee consisted of 624 reviewers in total (including 27 chairs, 124 SPC, 473 reviewers) with many serving on multiple tracks. Third, the proceedings necessitated a third volume, and contains a total of 175 papers in 2,151 pages. The rest of this report details the conference program and events. Date: 2--6 April 2023. Website: https://ecir2023.org/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses relative relevant undercitation (RRU) in computer science databases including Scopus, Web of Science (WoS), and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Digital Library (DL). According to the article, conference papers are not always as represented as journal articles in citations for reasons that include parsing technology and a traditional bias for journals. Three experiments testing computer science databases for inaccuracies are described. Tables present researched information about citations by author and database.

The authors present their thoughts on the effectiveness of anonymizing peer reviews in the academic publication process. They argue in favor of double-blind reviews despite the extra administrative effort required, citing examples from software engineering conferences and published papers.

The article examines the process of peer review. Particular focus is given to computational and artificial intelligence support for the peer review process. Additional topics discussed include how peer review relates to computer science and other disciplines, the creation of more global embedding for the peer-review process, and a summary of the main activities of peer review, including paper submission, assembling the program committee and reviewing papers.

The article presents the author's views regarding the shift in the computer science profession from a focus on journal publications to conference publications. Topics include approaches to improve conference reviewing and management; information on the process of revision for science and engineering publications; and the different requirements for papers accepted for journal publications and conference presentations.

The article examines a dataset of 1.5 million computer science research papers maintained by Microsoft Academic Search. The authors found that the citation count of the articles over the years follows diverse patterns. Each article included bibliographic information such as title, unique index, author affiliation, abstract and keywords, year of publication, and publication place. The authors' findings increase the scope for reinvestigation of bibliometric indices for scientific research, not just for computer science.

In recent years, there has been a surge in the number of available rapid prototyping tools, making it easier than ever to create functioning prototypes with minimal technical background and at a low cost. However, most of these tools do not have the flexibility to allow for immediate physical modifications once a prototype has been built or programmed, and are often limited in movement by the size or range of the wired system. Accordingly, simple paper remains one of the most pervasive creative platforms in the world due to its low cost, light weight, freedom of physical spatial manipulation, disposability, and low interaction overhead. In this article we introduce "Animated Paper," a new wireless prototyping platform which combines paper, shape memory alloy (SMA), retro-reflective material, and copper foil. This platform makes it possible to create moving toys out of ordinary print paper with minimal modification to the physical composition of the paper itself, facilitating simple trial-and-error modifications. We also introduce a laser control system which allows for precise, wireless motion control of the SMA-enhanced paper by tracking retro-reflective markers on the paper using a laser and photo sensor. Lastly, we present the results of a preliminary user study to demonstrate the usability of our prototype system and also provide possibilities for how to further develop our wirelessly controlled, moving paper platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 9th ACM SIGIR / The 13th International Conference on the Theory of Information Retrieval (ICTIR 2023) held in Taiwan co-located with SIGIR 2023. This brief report provides an overview of ICTIR 2023 and introduces the student reviewer program, which provides an opportunity for the students to understand and contribute to the conference review process. Date: 23 July 2023. Website: https://sigir.org/ictir2023/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the substitution of paper diaries by electronic diaries, used by the employees. Papermills are gigantic and complex machines, incorporating state-of-the-art technology. As part of a larger project a papermill in Finland was used to provide support for factory floor workers in process industries. Paper diaries were substituted with electronic diaries on one production line employing 35 workers. Entries constitute dialogues within and between work shifts, and partially with other organizational levels. The e-diary design was a cooperative effort between workers in an oil refinery a superintendent and foreman from the papermill, and the research group. It was piloted in the oil refinery, and a refined prototype was used in the papermill. All 35 production line staff workers received about four hours training on the diary including its underlying Microsoft Windows and Lotus Notes applications. E-diary entries are a text version of talking-out-loud-with extended spatial and temporal scope. INSET: An Example of Extended Dialogue Reject Carrier Problems in.....

The article discusses the publication process for academic papers in computer science (CS) and provides a proposal for CSPub (clean-slate or computer science publication), an open-access publication system. The author identifies problems which he believes could be addressed by CSPub including low acceptance rates, the resubmission of rejected papers, and short incremental work which is published due to the demands of promotion and tenure systems.

The article discusses the status of research papers published by computer science (CS) conferences, as compared with those published in CS journals. Debate has occurred in relation to the proper way in which to qualify the research presented in a paper. Problems exist in determining the quality of research in various journals due to the wide array of publication opportunities available. A scale that has been created to measure the quality of conference papers in a variety of ways, such as citations and rejection rates, is discussed.

The article discusses the computer science academic publication process, proposing a process which would improve the quality of papers accepted for publication while also improving the review process connected with such papers. Typically, authors submit papers that are anonymously reviewed by program committee (PC) members, the author states. Other topics include conferences within the broader computer science community that modify the process and an increase in the number of papers submitted for review.

This article reports that research conferences are often the most desirable venues for presenting research results. For academic computer scientists and engineers, preferring conferences over journals is so common that they even lobby administrators to ensure that conference papers can be viewed in the same light as journal papers in other fields. Hence, the health of conferences is vital to the computer science research mission. One conventional indication of health is the number of submissions and the acceptance rate at the conference. Calls for papers often include encouraging words for big idea or new direction papers. The problem is that reviewers see so many regular papers it is just too difficult to switch gears and be more understanding when evaluating bolder papers with holes in arguments or missing measurements. Program committees typically start with a ranked list of papers based on the average of numerical ratings in order to cope with the large number of submissions. Big idea papers are sure to get some poor evaluations, which cause them to drop down the list.

The article focuses on case studies on sustainability in computer programming. The cases investigated were a paper mill's energy control system and a car-sharing service in Germany. The authors argue that creating a sustainability analysis framework will allow software developers to analyze the environmental and social aspects of their work and to balance this with technical and economic considerations. However, they note that sustainability requirements will add to the system scope and will necessitate more work during the requirements phase. INSET: Software Sustainability..

The article presents information on self-plagiarism in computer science. Students submit assignments inherited from their friends, online paper-mills provide term papers on popular topics, and occasionally researchers are found falsifying data or publishing the work of others as their own. Self-plagiarism occurs when authors reuse portions of their previous writings in subsequent research papers. Occasionally, the derived paper is simply a retitled and reformatted version of the original one, but more frequently it is assembled from bits and pieces of previous work. Incorporating texts or ideas from previously published work while unaware of the existence of that work. Incorporating texts or ideas from previously published work when writing to a community different from that in which the original work was published. Missing from the ACM and IEEE policy documents is any discussion of what the consequences of ignoring the rules and guidelines might be and whose responsibility it is to prevent plagiarized and self-plagiarized papers from being published. In contrast, most university course syllabi address the definition of plagiarism and who will look for it, as well as its potential consequences.

A personal narrative is presented which explores the author's experience of conducting an attendee survey when he served as a program chair of a Very Large Data Bases (VLDB) conference in 2014.

The article provides a study of women in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields by studying published conference works and extracting names, using a bibliometric approach by using the program NamSor Applied Onomastics to define the gender of published authors. It focuses particularly on the recent six years of conferences held by Transregional Research Centre 89 Invasive Computing (CRC/Transregio 89).

The author proposes that computing conferences should accept and publish all reasonable research paper submissions. He notes the strict limits placed on the number of accepted papers in conferences, arguing that even the best committees reject papers that could benefit the community. He believes that computing conferences should enforce standards for publication quality, but the standards are too strict. The author further argues that the research papers will ultimately be judged by accepted bibiliometrics such as citation counts and by their impact on the computing field and on the industry.

The article discusses the establishment of a system to provide metrics and rank the academic value of social science research articles, authors, universities and other organizations. Information is presented on the way the metrics began to have real-world implications for career advancement and tenure, tempting individuals to manipulate these metrics by utilizing methods such as crafting software scripts to boost their metrics and employing graduate students to repeatedly download their papers. The article ends by asking if the prevalence of cheating within academia is a result of the pursuit of status within the intellectual hierarchy, or a consequence of 'gamification' infiltrating academics' lives, eliciting behavior patterns inherent to human nature?

The Seventh International Workshop on Narrative Extraction from Texts (Text2Story'24) was held on March 24th, 2024, in conjunction with the 46th European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR 2024) in Glasgow, Scotland. Over the day, more than 50 attendees engaged in discussions and presentations focused on recent advancements in narrative representation, extraction, and generation. The workshop featured two invited keynote addresses, fourteen research paper presentations, and a poster session. The workshop proceedings are available online.1 Date: 24 March 2024. Website: https://text2story24.inesctec.pt/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines professional misconduct among academic publication examiners. Particular focus is given to the author's experiences having their own research papers rejected or questioned during the peer review process. Additional topics discussed include peer review processing and how computer science and software can aid the peer review process.

The article discusses the significance of fuzzing as an effective method for testing software. Fuzzing involves feeding random or invalid test data to programs to discover potential crashes or vulnerabilities, often at scale. Fuzzing is categorized into black-box, grey-box, and white-box approaches, each with varying levels of information about the system under test. Unlike traditional test generation papers that focus on theory and code coverage, fuzzing emphasizes practical applications and bug discovery in real systems. The article introduces a a paper that presents a novel twist to grey-box fuzzing, proposing a power schedule that selects seeds for mutation based on their potential to reveal new program behavior. This approach is underpinned by information theory and measures entropy as an efficiency metric for fuzzers. The article highlights the potential of fuzzing to bridge the gap between traditional test generation and practical testing methods, offering a valuable contribution to the field of software testing.

A list of books about the proceedings of conferences held by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is presented. These include "21st Annual Computer Personnel Research Conference," "11th Annual Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages" and "Second International Conference on Systems Documentation."

The article discusses developments and innovations in computer displays that are lighter, more durable, and more flexible than liquid-crystal displays (LCD). The article states that the new technology consists of front planes and back planes. According to the article, front plane technology in the form of electronic paper, also called e-paper, is produced by Massachusetts-based E Ink Corporation, and used in digital book readers such as the Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, and Sony Reader Digital Book. The article describes the other front plane technology called organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), which emit light and consume more power than e-paper yet have a higher lumen-per-watt rating. The article also discusses various possibilities in incorporating glass in flexible displays.

The author details the shoddy practices encouraged by academic emphasis on judging professionals according to how many papers they publish. Superficial research, marginal ideas, and repetitious content clutter the professional literature when people feel compelled to publish as many papers as possible. Some professionals game the system by entering into cliques whose members agree to append each others' names to their published research. Others stretch over several papers content that might ordinarily suffice for one.

The article presents information on software fuzzing, a process used for automated bug and vulnerability testing. Several papers are cited and discussed by Stefan Nagy, an assistant professor at the University of Utah. Software fuzzing uses new and unexpected inputs which are systematically generated in order to test programs. The cited papers provide information on topics such as specific classes of bugs and finding bugs in compilers, demonstrating the advantage of combining traditional testing methods with innovative techniques and machine learning in order to identify bugs in complex software systems.

The article discusses data quality and considers the building and scaling of data through open-source models. It mentions information duplication, degraded model quality, and data filtering in large language models (LLMs). Several research papers are cited including one titled "Textbooks are all you need" which focuses on Phi1, a transformer-based model which synthetically generates high-quality textbooks using output from sources such as GPT-3.5.

The article focuses on the evolution of paperless office as an inevitable result of technology advances. The introduction of new technologies has often stimulated dynamic interactions between old and new. New technologies are commonly misperceived as total replacements for old ones, when in fact the introduction of a new technology can stimulate a synergy between old and new. Electronic media and printed media complement, and in some ways even reinforce each other. Today, paper remains the most popular document medium because of its credibility, tangibility, and ease of use, portability and compatibility with all imaging devices, such as facsimile units, copiers, printers, and scanners. Despite the enormous popularity of computers and personal digital assistants, along with the improvements in screen technology, mobile computing technology and navigational and input tools, paper usage in the U.S. continues to increase. While paper will not become obsolete any time soon, a shift is occurring in how it is being used.

The article discusses several troubling trends within machine-learning scholarship and researchers as of June 2019 that could mislead the public and hinder future research. Topics include trends of failure to distinguish between explanation and speculation, failure to identify sources of empirical gains, using mathematics that confuses or impresses rather than clarifies, and misusing language.

The First International Workshop on Graph-Based Approaches in Information Retrieval (IRonGraphs 2024) was held as a physical (in-person) event on March 24, 2024, in conjunction with the 46th European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR 2024) in Glasgow (Scotland). The scientific program included paper, spotlight, and poster presentations. Two keynote talks were delivered by Francesco Fabbri (Spotify, Spain) and Ruihong Qiu (University of Queensland, Australia). This report presents an overview of the activities conducted during the workshop and the main topics covered. Date: 24 March 2024. Website: https://irongraphs.github.io/ecir2024/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A reprint of an article that appeared online in April 2022 is presented in which the authors discuss human memory, bias, and assumptions among individuals concerning the significance of the role of authors in scholarly papers and articles. The authors discuss the concept of preferential attachment, the Matthew Effect attribution skew, and unknown contributors to scholarly work.

Invites papers to be published in the journal "Communications of the ACM."

The article presents a calendar of conferences and workshops of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The 1985 ACM Computer Science Conference will be held from March 12-14, 1985 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The 2nd Conference on Office Information Systems will take place from June 24-25 in Toronto, Ontario. The 17th Annual Microprogramming Workshop is scheduled to take place from October 30-November 2, 1984 in New Orleans.