This skill guides authors on positioning information retrieval (IR) work for the Text REtrieval Conference (TREC). It functions as a venue-selection and manuscript re-framing tool, ensuring the submission aligns with TREC's focus on shared evaluation tracks, test collections, and NIST-style benchmarking. It helps authors structure evidence, understand reviewer expectations, and distinguish the work from general CS conference submissions.
Text REtrieval Conference (TREC) is a top computer-science conference venue for retrieval evaluation, tracks, test collections, search tasks, and NIST-style benchmarking. It rewards a retrieval paper that contributes to or learns from shared evaluation tracks and test collections. Treat this skill as a fit / venue-selection / re-framing tool for conference submission strategy, not as a substitute for the current year's CFP, author kit, ethics policy, or submission portal.
Because CS conferences change deadlines, templates, page limits, review workflow, artifact rules, AI-use policy, and rebuttal formats every cycle, always verify the live official instructions before making a submission-ready recommendation. Start from the official source anchor recorded for this venue in ../../resources/conference-roster.md and ../../resources/official-source-map.md.
When to trigger
The author names TREC / Text REtrieval Conference as the target venue.
A manuscript in retrieval evaluation needs a conference-fit read before being formatted or submitted.
The paper must be re-framed from journal style or arXiv style into a selective CS conference narrative.
The author needs an evidence-gap, anonymity, artifact, rebuttal, or re-routing diagnosis for this venue.
Scope & topic fit
Core fit: retrieval evaluation, tracks, test collections, search tasks, and NIST-style benchmarking.
Best submissions make a precise contribution type visible: algorithm, theorem, system, dataset, benchmark, empirical finding, design artifact, tool, or socio-technical analysis.
The paper should explain why the result matters to TREC's reviewers, not just why it is interesting to the authors' lab or product context.
Position related work against the most recent conference-cycle papers in this venue and its closest siblings; stale comparisons are a common early-review weakness.
If the contribution is interdisciplinary, state which part is CS research and which part is domain evidence.
Venue-specific calibration
Reviewer lens: Treat TREC as a retrieval evaluation venue whose reviewers expect the scope and evidence to match its own community. Do not submit a generic CS paper until the introduction names the exact subcommunity, contribution type, and proof or empirical standard.
Contribution hook to foreground: the venue-specific contribution bar.
Scope vocabulary to use naturally in the abstract and introduction: retrieval evaluation, tracks, test collections, search tasks, and NIST-style benchmarking.
Official anchor domain: trec.nist.gov. Quote annual rules only after opening that source and the current-year CFP/author kit.
Close-neighbor routing guardrail
Use this profile only when the manuscript's central contribution is genuinely in retrieval
evaluation and the author can say why TREC reviewers are the primary audience, not merely a
convenient deadline.
Closest roster neighbors to compare before final routing: acm-sigir-conference-on-research- and-development-in-information-retrieval (SIGIR), european-conference-on-information- retrieval (ECIR), acm-sigplan-conference-on-programming-language-design-and- implementation (PLDI), acm-sigplan-symposium-on-principles-of-programming-languages
(POPL). Break ties by contribution type, evidence shape, reviewer community, and the current
official CFP from trec.nist.gov.
What distinguishes this venue from its closest siblings
What TREC is. The NIST Text REtrieval Conference — an evaluation campaign building shared test collections and running tracks, not a standard paper venue.
vs SIGIR / ECIR / CIKM. Those are research conferences; TREC produces benchmarks/tracks the IR field then evaluates against.
Routing. Use TREC collections in your SIGIR/ECIR/CIKM paper; participate in TREC tracks for shared-task results.
TREC-specific routing detail
Prefer TREC when the work is an information-retrieval evaluation campaign, track participation, test collection, shared task, retrieval benchmark, or evaluation methodology.
Route spoken language technology to SLT/INTERSPEECH and user-centered search behavior to CHIIR when campaign-style text retrieval evaluation is not the core.
TREC evidence should explain track rules, run configuration, test collection, metrics, pooling or judging assumptions, and what the evaluation teaches beyond leaderboard rank.
Method & evidence bar
Use task-appropriate baselines, multiple datasets or languages when the claim is broad, and error analysis that explains model behavior.
For LLM work, control for data leakage, prompt sensitivity, evaluation contamination, and human-evaluation reliability.
For resources, document annotation, licensing, demographics, quality control, and intended use.
For TREC, the evidence must support the venue-specific signature: a retrieval paper that contributes to or learns from shared evaluation tracks and test collections.
Include limitations, negative results, compute/resource reporting, data provenance, and ethics details when they affect the claim.
Structure & house style
State the language phenomenon, task, or system behavior before the model name.
Connect examples to measured errors; reviewers dislike anecdotal examples presented as evidence.
Use the current official template exactly; do not guess page limits, font sizes, supplement rules, anonymity exceptions, or camera-ready requirements from old cycles.
The introduction should answer: problem, why now, what is new, why this venue, and what evidence proves the claim.
Put the strongest result in the main paper, not only in the appendix or supplement; reviewers should not have to reconstruct the contribution.
Re-check the current cycle's CFP, author kit, submission system, abstract/paper deadlines, page limits, supplementary-material rules, anonymity policy, dual-submission policy, ethics policy, AI-use policy, artifact/code/data expectations, rebuttal/author-response format, and camera-ready requirements.
Confirm the review workflow and portal: OpenReview / CMT / HotCRP / PCS / START or society portal, as specified for the current cycle.
Check whether accepted papers require in-person presentation, separate registration, artifact badges, proceedings copyright, or post-acceptance release forms.
If the live official instructions conflict with this skill, the official instructions win.
Pre-submission self-check
One sentence states why this manuscript belongs at TREC, using the venue's scope rather than generic "top conference" language.
The claim is calibrated to the evidence: no broader than the datasets, proofs, systems, user studies, deployments, or threat model support.
Related work includes the nearest current-cycle retrieval evaluation papers and explains the technical delta.
The paper satisfies the current official template, anonymity, ethics, artifact, and rebuttal requirements.
The main paper is self-contained enough for reviewers to evaluate novelty and correctness without hunting through external links.
Common desk-reject triggers
Evaluation that is only a prompt table or cherry-picked generation examples.
Missing dataset documentation, licensing, or annotation reliability.
Claims of general language understanding from narrow English-only benchmarks.
Formatting, anonymity, dual-submission, external-link, or supplement violations under the current-year policy.
A contribution framed for a neighboring field while giving TREC reviewers too little technical or empirical substance.
Re-routing decision
If the paper misses TREC's bar, compare against annual-meeting-of-the-association-for-computational-linguistics / conference-on-empirical-methods-in-natural-language-processing / north-american-chapter-of-the-association-for-computational-linguistics / european-chapter-of-the-association-for-computational-linguistics. Re-route based on contribution type, not prestige: theory to a theory venue, systems to a systems venue, application-heavy work to a domain venue, and early ideas to workshops or shorter tracks when the official CFP supports them.
Output format
[Fit] High / Medium / Low (one-line reason)
[Target] Text REtrieval Conference (TREC)
[Contribution type] algorithm / theory / system / dataset / benchmark / empirical / design / security / other
[Main evidence gap] <single most important missing proof, experiment, study, artifact, or policy check>
[Official items to re-check] CFP / author kit / deadline / format / anonymity / ethics / AI-use / artifact / rebuttal / camera-ready
[Top rejection risk] <venue-specific risk>
[Re-route suggestion] <better-matched conference or journal if not a fit>
