SynIRgy
Simulation and Synthetic Data for Web-Scale Information Access
A meeting point for researchers building, questioning, and evaluating synthetic worlds.
The research question
How do we study systems
that respond to people?
Logged user data can be skewed, incomplete, and restricted for privacy reasons. Simulation and synthetic data create controlled, repeatable settings for studying search, recommendation, and personalization.
SynIRgy brings researchers and practitioners together to compare methods, challenge assumptions, and develop shared practice. Building on ECIR 2026, the workshop brings this conversation to the web community.
Explore the first editionAt every step: validity, fairness, privacy, and reproducibility.
Topics of interest
Five connected areas.
One shared conversation.
From the people we model to the tools we share, we welcome methodological work, ethical reflection, and applied case studies.
Users and interaction
Simulated users, synthetic profiles, and the question of how closely they reflect real behaviour.
Creating synthetic data
Generation methods, data fidelity, and the trade-offs between privacy and utility.
Developing and evaluating algorithms
Repeatable environments for search, recommendation, and retrieval-augmented AI.
Bias and ethics
Fairness, inclusive personas, transparency, and responsible uses of generated data.
Reproducibility and tooling
Shared simulators, open infrastructure, and standards that make studies comparable.
Built around discussion
Bring your methods.
Leave with new directions.
A half-day of lightning talks, breakout groups, and open discussion. Together, we will exchange methods and datasets, establish common terminology, and identify the field’s most pressing open problems.
- A community research roadmap
- A shared collection of tools and resources
- A report on open challenges and next steps
Plan your contribution
Important dates
| Paper submission | 4 January 2027 |
|---|---|
| Notification of acceptance | 1 February 2027 |
| Final version | 16 February 2027 |
| Workshop | 10–11 May 2027 (exact day TBA) |
| WWW 2027 main conference | 12–14 May 2027 |
All deadlines are 23:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth).