ACM* SIGIR** is the largest international research community in the field of information retrieval (IR) and organizes or co-organizes peer-reviewed international conferences such as SIGIR, WSDM, CIKM, JCDL, CHIIR, ICTIR, and so on. ACM has approved “Tokyo ACM SIGIR Chapter” as the first SIGIR local chapter in Japan since 27th December, 2017.
In Japan, many researchers have been actively working on IR and tackle various kinds of tasks such as information access, databases, natural language processing, artificial intelligence, human computer interaction, digital libraries, knowledge management, and so on. Recently, with the rapid development of large language models, the ways in which people access information are changing; however, IR technologies still play an essential role behind the scenes. Furthermore, in research, education, and industry, technologies that enable us to quickly find appropriate information are indispensable. Therefore, IR will continue to occupy a central position as an important technology in both society and academia.
Tokyo ACM SIGIR Chapter aims at achieving the following goals:
- Providing SIGIR updates with IR researchers in Japan working on various IR research topics with diverse background,
- Holding some events closely related to international conferences organized or co-organized by SIGIR to encourage interactions between domestic and international IR research communities.
So far, we have held some events such as IR reading where we introduce state-of-the-arts published in major IR international conferences, a mentoring workshop to promote paper submission to competitive international conferences. Our activities are in the 5th term now and we try to keep improving the presence of Japan in the international IR research community.
Last but not least, we are recruiting members who agree with our aim and support our activities. We would appreciate it very much if you would join our chapter.
Thank you very much for your support for Tokyo ACM SIGIR Chapter!
October, 2025
Tokyo ACM SIGIR Chapter
Makoto P. Kato (Chair, University of Tsukuba / National Institute of Informatics)
Jiyi Li (Vice-Chair, Hokkaido University)
Yasunobu Sumikawa (Treasurer, Takushoku University)
*ACM: Association for Computing Machinery
**SIGIR: Special Interest Group in Information Retrieval
