Symposium on Future Directions in Information Access

About

The 14th edition of our PhD Symposium on Future Directions in Information Access (FDIA 2026) will be held in conjunction with the 17th European Summer School on Information Retrieval (ESSIR 2026, https://2026.essir.eu/, 27-31 July 2026). We cordially invite Masters and doctoral (PhD) students as well as early-stage researchers to participate in the Symposium on Future Directions in Information Access (FDIA). This forum offers a valuable opportunity to present your emerging research and receive feedback from peers and established scholars in the field.

Accepted submissions will also be allowed to present their work as a poster at the following European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR 2027).

The symposium focuses on “Future Directions” by welcoming submissions that explore early-stage research, including pilot studies and initial findings, conceptual frameworks, current challenges, and doctoral work in progress. We use the term “Information Access” to encompass the broader spectrum of information retrieval, storage, and management, including interaction and usage aspects. This reflects the evolving nature of information systems in practice.

By participating in the FDIA Symposium, you will gain experience presenting your research, receive constructive feedback, connect with fellow researchers, deepen your understanding of Information Retrieval concepts, and engage with thought-provoking presentations from experienced scholars. We welcome submissions that present new research directions and emerging work in Information Access and Retrieval. Papers that stimulate discussion and offer fresh perspectives are encouraged. The symposium provides a supportive environment for researchers to share preliminary findings, theoretical models, and innovative approaches that contribute to advancing the field.

FDIA 2026 is the next chapter in a long list of previous events. Previous symposiums were held in Wolverhampton, UK (with ESSIR 2025), Amsterdam, Netherlands (with ESSIR 2024), Vienna, Austria (with ESSIR 2023), Lisbon, Portugal (with ESSIR 2022), Milan, Italy in 2019 (with ESSIR 2019), Tianjin, China in 2018 (with ICTIR 2018), Barcelona, Spain in 2017 (with ESSIR 2017); Thessaloniki, Greece in 2015 (with ESSIR 2015); Granada, Spain in 2013 (with ESSIR 2013); Koblenz, Germany in 2011 (with ESSIR 2011), Padova, Italy in 2009 (with ESSIR 2009); London, England in 2008, and Glasgow, Scotland in 2007 (with ESSIR 2007). They have provided an entertaining and exciting forum for early-stage researchers for sharing new research ideas.

Topics

Areas of research include, but are not limited to:

  • Information Retrieval Theory
  • Human-Computer Interaction and Information Retrieval, User Modelling, Interactive IR
  • Collaborative Information Seeking and Searching
  • IR for Good
  • IR Evaluation
  • Learning to Rank
  • Retrieval-augmented Generation
  • Neural and Generative IR
  • Multimedia and Multimodal IR
  • Recommender Systems
  • Web IR
  • Clustering and Categorization
  • Enterprise Search
  • Conversational Agents, knowledge graphs
  • IR Applications (e.g. Digital Humanities, News IR, Legal IR, IR and Bibliometrics, Academic Search and Recommendation, etc.)
  • NeuraSearch (use of fMRI, EEG, fNTIR, Eye Tracking, etc. in IR)

Submission

Papers should be 2 pages in length excluding references for presentation and poster (e.g., an outline of the PhD or Master’s project, a discussion of topics and ideas). Submissions should be converted to PDF and submitted via EasyChair. Please use the one-column CEUR style (CEURART.zip).

Important dates:

03/07/2026 Submission Deadline
17/07/2026 Notification Deadline
30/07/2026 FDIA 2026 in Bucharest (During ESSIR July 27-31, 2026)

Programme

13:30–13:35

Opening and welcome

13:35–13:50

Hrishita Chakrabarti
Fostering Search Competency with Scaffolded Children IR

13:50–14:05

Jokie Blaise, Yashar Moshfeghi and Tahereh Nematiaram
Single vs. Multi-Agent RAG for Materials Science

14:05–14:20

Raimondo Graceffa and Bogdan Ionescu
Telecom Command Retrieval through Structured Knowledge Representations in RAG

14:20–14:35

Elena-Ruxandra Luțan
Towards Affective Cross-Domain Recommendation in Books and Perfumes

14:35–14:50

Sebastian Volz
Scaling and Extending Parametric Retrieval-Augmented Generation

14:50–15:00

Buffer and transition

15:00–15:30

Coffee break

15:30–15:45

Sarah Bouaraba
Context-Augmented Generation of Synthetic Radiotherapy Follow-up Reports

15:45–16:00

Nathan Nowakowski, Elöd Egyed-Zsigmond, Sylvie Calabretto and Diana Nurbakova
Towards Meta-Cognitive Information Access: Trustworthy Agentic Retrieval-Augmented Classification for Real-Time Streams

16:00–16:15

Shuoqi Sun
Characterizing the Evolving Landscape of Modern Information Seeking

16:15–16:30

Mariana Dias and Carla Teixeira Lopes
Personal Conversational AI in Health: A Research Agenda

16:30–16:45

Libo Ren
Beyond Relevance: Integrating Paper Quality and User Alignment in Scholarly Information Retrieval

16:45–17:00

Erdem-Yuneis Eregep
Information Retrieval for Spatial-Economic Analysis: Building Firm-Level Evidence on Romania’s Infrastructure, Clusters, and Competitiveness

17:00–17:15

General discussion and feedback

17:15–17:30

Closing remarks

Best Paper Award

Shuoqi Sun
Characterizing the Evolving Landscape of Modern Information Seeking

Runner-up

Sebastian Volz
Scaling and Extending Parametric Retrieval-Augmented Generation

Contact

Please email fdia2026@easychair.org.

Organisers

FDIA is organized by the BCS Information Retrieval Specialist Group.

PC Chairs

Yashar Moshfeghi, University of Strathclyde, UK
Anirban Chakraborty, University of Wolverhampton, UK