Integrating IR Technologies for Professional Search

Abstract

Professional search in specific domains (e.g. patent, medical, scientific literature, media) usually needs an exploratory type of search which is characterized more often, in comparison to fact finding and question answering web search, by recall-oriented information needs and by uncertainty and evolution or change of the information need. Additionally, the complexity of the tasks that need to be performed by professional searchers, which usually include not only retrieval but also information analysis and monitoring tasks, require association, pipelining and possibly integration of information as well as synchronization and coordination of multiple and potentially concurrent search views produced from different datasets, search tools and UIs. Many facets of IR technology (e.g. exploratory search, aggregated search, federated search, task-based search, IR over query sessions, cognitive IR approaches, Human Computer and Information Retrieval) aim to at least partially address these demands. This workshop aims to stimulate exploratory research, bring together various facets of IR research and promote discussion between researchers towards the development of a generalised framework facilitating the integration of IR technologies and search tools into next generation professional search systems. This envisioned framework should be supported from new or the extension of existing protocols and may influence the design of next generation professional search systems.