CALL FOR PAPERS
ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS)
Special Issue on Contextual Search and Recommendation

Submission Deadline: March 24, 2014

MOTIVATION
Information systems that leverage contextual knowledge about users and
their search situations-such as their histories, demographics,
surroundings, constraints or devices-can provide tailored search
experiences and higher-quality task outcomes. Within information
retrieval, there is a growing focus on how knowledge of a user's
interests, intentions, and context can improve aspects of search and
recommendation such as ranking and query suggestion; especially for
exploratory and/or complex tasks that can span multiple queries or
search sessions. The interactions that occur during these complex
tasks provide context that can be leveraged by search systems to
support users' broader information-seeking activities. Next-generation
recommender systems face analogous challenges, including integrating
signals from user exploration to update recommendations in real time.

The purpose of this special issue is to describe the state-of-the-art
in contextual search and recommendation, and provide an outlet for the
presentation of significant advances in these two important related
areas.

SCOPE & TOPICS OF INTEREST
While all high-quality manuscripts focused on contextual search and
recommendation will be considered, we are particularly interested in
those approaches targeted at exploratory and/or complex tasks. Topics
of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

o Task-oriented information search;
o Contextual retrieval for complex and exploratory tasks, including
tasks that persist over time;
o Proactive search and recommendation of task-relevant content;
o Contextual recommendation systems for exploratory tasks, especially
real-time updates and human-in-the-loop systems;
o Machine learning and data mining for task-oriented information search;
o Evaluating task-oriented information search;
o Task-awareness in mobile and situated devices, including
personalization across devices and domains;
o User studies of task-oriented information search (in the lab and
in the wild);
o Scalability issues in profile building and user privacy for
task-oriented information search;
o Personalized task-oriented retrieval, including short- and
long-term modeling.

All accepted manuscripts are expected to make a significant scientific
contribution and present a rigorous evaluation of the methods they
present (e.g., a comprehensive user study should accompany any new
interface proposal).

SUBMISSION
For submission instructions, please refer to
http://tois.acm.org/authors.html
and add a comment in the email to the Assistant to the Editor-in-Chief
that the submission is intended for the special issue on Contextual
Search and Recommendation. All papers will be reviewed by three
external reviewers plus at least one guest editor.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE
All submissions are due by March 24, 2014

GUEST EDITORS
Paul N. Bennett, Microsoft Research 
Kevyn Collins-Thompson, University of Michigan
Diane Kelly, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Ryen White, Microsoft Research
Yi Zhang, University of California Santa Cruz

FOR MORE INFORMATION
http://tois.acm.org/announcement.html