First International Workshop on Professional Search

In this report we describe the outcome of the First International Workshop on Professional Search, held in co-location with SIGIR 2018. The workshop addressed the specific requirements and challenges of professional search, as opposed to web search. The workshop included a survey held among 113 professional searchers, two keynote talks, six short paper talks, and two break-out sessions. From all parts of the workshop, we concluded that (1) we can define professional search with a set of common characteristics; but (2) there are definitely differences between domains; (3) we are in need of more knowledge about the search process in different domains, and (4) we need to collect data, not only Cranfieldstyle test collections, but also user observation data that help us understand the challenges and requirements of professional search better. Currently, there are many open problems that potentially have an impact on the IR community beyond the professional domains. We therefore call the scientific IR community to address professional search more actively.