Report on the 1st Early Career Researchers' Roundtable for Information Access Research (ECRs4IR 2022) at CHIIR 2022

Abstract

The First Early Career Researchers Roundtable for Information Access Research Workshop , in conjunction with the Seventh ACM Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (CHIIR) 2022, looked into the future of research, collaborations, and self-development to ask the following. Where are the opportunities for researchers in a (post-)pandemic environment, especially for Early Career Researchers (ECRs)? What do we need to do to get there? Which practical implementations can the broader CHIIR community support? The workshop started with an invited talk. Instead of conventional paper presentations, the attendees discussed the lessons learned from working in a pandemic. This report, co-authored by the workshop's organisers and its participants, summarises the discussion. This report aims to provide the broader CHIIR community with feedback on the workshop and foster ideas raised by ECRs to support ECRs. Two primary outcomes are (i) ECRs are often enthusiastic about taking on roles within a community, but formal validation and recognition are needed for their efforts and (ii) that the role of a conference needs to be reevaluated optimising the benefits of attending the event. Date: 14 March 2022. Website: https://sites.google.com/view/ecrs4ir/home.