PatOlympics 2011 - Call for Participation

Co-located with the Information Retrieval Facility Symposium
June 7th, 2011 / Vienna, Austria

After the success of its first edition, the PatOlympics return in 2011 to promote direct interaction between search systems researchers and developers, and patent information professionals. Academic and industry groups are invited to submit expressions of interest to participate in one or both PatSports as early as possible, and confirm participation no later than March 22nd, 2011. The expressions of interest should be accompanies by a 1-page description of the system to be used during the event.

Quick facts

• Date / duration: June 7th, 2011 / half-day event
• Location: Vienna, Austria - collocated with the Information Retrieval Facility Symposium (irfs.at)
• PatSports:
  • ChemAthlon : Chemical IR
  • CrossLingual Retrieving : Cross Lingual IR (FR/EN/DE)

• Deadline for confirmation of participation: March 22nd, 2011

How the PatOlympics work

During the half day event, the participating systems will be demonstrated by their creators to professional patent information users. Each professional user, also called 'referee', will have a need for information that he or she will try to solve using the system. The system will have indexed the data made available to it by the IRF as soon as group has confirmed its participation to the event. Results retrieved by the system, as well as those identified as correct by the referee will be sent to the PatOlympics server via either a web interface, manually, or an API, automatically (function of the system's preference).
The event will take place in session, in each of which a referee will work with a group, using the group's system, to solve his or her need for information. At the end of a session, the referees will change the group they work with and the previous group will no longer be allowed to submit results for the need for information of this particular referee.

Why participate

Participate in the PatOlympics in order to have the opportunity to interact with end users of search systems, to learn what they are looking for and to improve your system. Also, participate in the PatOlympics to take part in the most innovative and dynamic evaluation campaign for [patent] information retrieval. Finally, participate in the PatOlympics to win an actual medal!

The Data

Participating systems will be asked to index the CLEF-IP 2011 data for the CrossLingual Retrieving PatSport and the patent documents subset of the TREC-CHEM 2010 collection (which is also used in the TREC-CHEM 2011 campaign).

Contact

In order to gain access to the data to be indexed, to manifest an expression of interest or for any other information, contact Mihai Lupu m.lupu_at_ir-facility.org