Call for SPECIAL SESSION "MIRrors: Looking back to the past of ISMIR to face the future of MIR"

--What is MIRrors?--

ISMIR 2012 will feature a special session on "Looking back to the past of ISMIR to face the future of MIR", (the "MIRrors" session) in which authors will present reflections on the evolution of the MIR field or a particular MIR topic since 2000, and provide insights on short-term future challenges.

We are looking for provocative, controversial ideas, challenging and thought-provocative positional papers.

For instance, MIRrors papers may:

- Reflect on why a particular topic has failed, is systematically not improving, and why it may be doomed to continue this way.
- Reflect on negative results that have, or have not, had the proper impact on MIR research.
- Retrieve/revisit some forgotten or scarcely cited papers or promising idea(s) from a particular edition of the conference, or a number of editions, whose potential has not been fully exploited.
- Remind, recover, revisit what was presented on a given edition of the ISMIR conference, highlighting the best or most significant contributions.
- Trace and explain the evolution of a given idea through different editions of ISMIR.
- Provide a review of the impact of a particular idea on the MIR community.
- Provide a review of the impact of a particular MIR idea/topic on other conferences or neighboring fields of science (e.g. including a technical review in terms of h-index).
- Propose replication studies, in particular showing discrepancies between commonly accepted ideas in the MIR community and reality.
...

--Participating to the MIRrors session--

The MIRrors session consists of *invited* submissions.
Nevertheless, researchers are invited to express their interest in participating to the MIRrors session by submitting an abstract of no more than 200 words to <ismir2012-papers@ismir.net>;. (Note the *very early deadline* for expressions of interest. Expressions of interest reaching the Committee after this deadline, or longer than the word limit will not be considered.)
Selected authors will then be individually invited by the Committee to submit a paper to be reviewed for possible inclusion in the session (see dates below). The submitted papers will be reviewed by 3 referees.

This call applies both to PhD students reviewing the state-of-the-art for their thesis as well as seasoned researchers.

--Format--

Paper submissions (only for invited authors) should comply with the regular ISMIR paper format. Papers should be 6 pages-long at most.
Accepted papers will be included in the conference proceedings.
Accepted papers will be online 1 month before the conference, and will be presented at the conference in short talks, leaving plenty of room for discussion.

--Special Issue--

A selection of papers from the MIRrors session will be considered for inclusion, together with a regular set of submissions for a special issue of an international journal on the topic of "Current status and future directions in MIR research". This special issue is intended to appear after ISMIR 2012 and to also comprise papers not presented at the conference.

--Important dates for MIRrors--

• Deadline for expressions of interest to MIRrors: December 19th 2011
• Committee invites selection of authors to submit: January 12th 2012
• Deadline for MIRrors papers (only for invited authors): May 11th 2012
• Rebuttal period: June 4th-18th 2012
• Notification of acceptance: June 18th 2012