The Third Search Futures Workshop at ECIR'26

Leif Azzopardi, Charles L. A. Clarke, Claudia Hauff, Yubin Kim, Zhaochun Ren, Adam Roegiest, Johanne R. Trippas, Saber Zerhoudi

Abstract: As advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), primarily Generative AI, continue to push research and practical boundaries in the research, development, and evaluation of Information Retrieval (IR) systems, continuing to envision how the field could and should develop is a critical question. In the third edition of the Search Futures workshop, we continue the trend of prompting critical discussions of what IR currently is but what it can and should be. As part of this edition, we look back at previous visions of search futures and look at how the community has attained those futures. Moreover, the workshop continues to be a venue for the IR community to work collaboratively to build new visions of the future, address concerns with the trajectory of research, and to continue to further strengthen the field going forward.