18th International Conference on Similarity Search and Applications,
SISAP 2025
Reykjavik, Iceland, October 1-3, 2025

https://www.sisap.org/2025/

Important Dates

Regular and Special Session Papers

• Abstract submission deadline: May 11, 2025 (AoE) extended to May 25, 2025 (AoE)

• Paper submission deadline: May 18, 2025 (AoE) extended to June 1, 2025 (AoE)

• Acceptance notification: July 14, 2025 (AoE)

• Camera-ready due: July 31, 2025 (AoE)

Demonstration and Doctoral Symposium Papers

• Paper submission deadline: June 6, 2025 (AoE)

• Acceptance notification: July 14, 2025 (AoE)

• Camera-ready due: July 31, 2025 (AoE)

Scope

The 18th International Conference on Similarity Search and Applications (SISAP) is an annual forum for researchers and application developers in the area of similarity data management. It aims at the technological problems shared by numerous application domains, such as data mining, information retrieval, multimedia retrieval, computer vision, pattern recognition, computational biology, geography, biometrics, machine learning, and many others that make use of similarity search as a necessary supporting service. From its roots in metric indexing, SISAP has expanded to become the only international conference entirely devoted to all issues surrounding the theory, design, analysis, practice, and application of content-based and feature-based similarity search. Since 2021, SISAP has been a CORE Rank B conference.

The conference proceedings will be published by Springer as a volume in the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series.

A small selection of the best papers presented at the conference will be invited for a post-conference special issue of Elsevier’s Information Systems journal. These extended versions will be subject to a second round of peer review at the journal.

Important Additional Scholarly Activities at SISAP

• SISAP Indexing Challenge

• Sixth Doctoral Symposium on Similarity Search and Applications

Submissions

SISAP 2025 allows for four forms of submissions: long research papers (from 9 to 14 pages), short research papers (of up to 8 pages), demonstration papers (of up to 8 pages), and doctoral symposium papers (up to 6 pages plus 2 pages of references). The submission itself, including references and appendices, should fit within these page limits. Papers must be written in English and formatted according to the LNCS guidelines.

Papers have to be submitted in PDF format through EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sisap2025 

Regular and Special Session Papers 

The organisers of SISAP 2025 call for novel and original research papers that address the various topics of interest related to the conference. We encourage contributions both to theoretical aspects and applications.

Full papers (from 9 to 14 pages) are expected to be descriptions of complete technical work, whereas short papers (of up to 8 pages) can describe innovative approaches or preliminary results which may nevertheless require more work to mature. Vision papers and other position papers should be submitted as short research papers.

Special session papers will supplement the regular research papers and be included in the proceedings of SISAP 2025, which will be published by Springer as a volume in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series.

Regular and special session research papers will be peer-reviewed in a double-blind review process. Thus, the submissions must be properly anonymized.

The Best Paper will be recognized with a certificate and a monetary prize, thanks to Springer's sponsorship.

Special Sessions 

Special sessions are mini-venues, each focusing on one state-of-the-art research direction within the field of similarity search and applications. For SISAP 2025, we call for contributions for the following two special sessions:

• IRMC: Interactive Retrieval for Multimedia Collections. This session focuses on innovative methods and systems that enhance user interaction and experience in multimedia retrieval, covering areas such as user-centric interfaces, relevance feedback mechanisms, and interactive search paradigms.
  Learn more: IRMC Special Session

• BRIDGES: Bridging Past and Present: Similarity Search for Digital Cultural Heritage and GLAM Content. This session focuses on advances in similarity search and retrieval techniques for digital cultural heritage and GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) content, addressing both technical innovations and real‐world applications. The session aims to bring together researchers, practitioners, and GLAM professionals to explore novel methodologies, discuss challenges, and showcase successful implementations of similarity‐based retrieval in cultural heritage contexts.
  Learn more: BRIDGES Special Session

Demonstration Papers

SISAP 2025 invites novel, impactful demonstrations aligned with its topics of interest. Submissions (up to 8 pages, including references) must include a mandatory 1-page PDF appendix describing how the demo will be conducted on-site. Demonstrations will be evaluated on novelty, technical challenges, and on-site impact in a single-blind review process.

Please see https://www.sisap.org/2025/demonstrations.html  for more details.

Doctoral Symposium Papers

SISAP 2025 Doctoral Symposium provides a forum for PhD students to present their research ideas and receive feedback from senior members of the research community. The Symposium fosters a collaborative environment, encouraging constructive discussions and sharing of ideas.

The doctoral symposium papers will be peer-reviewed in a single-blind review process.

Please see https://www.sisap.org/2025/doctoralsymposium.html  for more details.

SISAP Indexing Challenge

The SISAP Indexing Challenge is an event for researchers and practitioners to test new and/or well-tuned and optimised indexing approaches for shared tasks in laboratory and practical conditions. The Indexing Challenge results provide valuable comparisons of competing approaches and their implementations from given viewpoints and environments.

The Indexing Challenge papers will be peer-reviewed in a single-blind review process.

Please see https://sisap-challenges.github.io/2025/index.html  for more details.

Topics of interest

Topics of interest to the SISAP community include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Similarity

• Similarity queries (k-NN, range, reverse NN, top-k, Approximate and/or precise solutions, etc.)

• Similarity measures (for vectors, graphs, structures, time series, complex data, tensors, secondary similarity, etc.)

• Similarity operations (joins, ranking, classification, categorization, filtering, etc.)

• Scalability

• Indexing and access methods for similarity-based processing

• High-performance/large-scale similarity search (distributed, parallel, etc.)

• Data management (transaction support, dynamic maintenance, etc.)

• Theory

• Models of similarity

• Intrinsic dimensionality and Curse of dimensionality

• Discriminability and contrast

• Languages for similarity databases

• Manifolds and subspaces

• Analytics, Learning, Artificial Intelligence

• Feature selection and extraction for similarity search

• Representations learning for feature extraction

• Visual analytics for similarity-based operations

• Learning/adaptive similarity measures

• Similarity in learning and mining

• Merging/combining multiple similarity modalities

• Evaluation

• Evaluation techniques for similarity queries and operations

• Cost models and analysis for similarity data processing

• Performance studies and comparisons

• Test collections and benchmarks

• Applications

• Multimedia retrieval systems

• Dense retrieval

• Vector databases

• Similarity search in emerging data domains

• Applications of similarity-based operations

• Industrial applications and case studies

• Similarity search cloud services

• Security and privacy of in similarity search

• Similarity for forensics and security

Organization

Steering Committee

• Giuseppe Amato, CNR-ISTI, Italy

• Edgar Chávez, CICESE, México

• Stéphane Marchand-Maillet, University of Geneva, Switzerland

• Marco Patella, University of Bologna, Italy

• Benjamin Kimia, Brown Unversity, USA

• Oscar Pedreira, University of A Coruña, Spain

General Co-Chairs

• Björn Þór Jónsson, Reykjavik University, Iceland

• Lucia Vadicamo, CNR-ISTI, Italy

Program Committee Co-Chairs

• Giuseppe Amato, CNR-ISTI, Italy

• Vladimir Mic, Aarhus University, Denmark

• Agma J. M. Traina, University of São Paulo, Brazil

Demonstration Chair

• Gylfi Þór Guðmundsson, Reykjavik University, Iceland

Doctoral Symposium Chair

• Laurent Amsaleg, IRISA-CNRS, France

Publications Chair

• Nicola Messina, CNR-ISTI, Italy

Publicity Chair

• Luca Ciampi, CNR-ISTI, Italy

• Conrado Martinez, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain

SISAP Indexing Challenge Chairs

• Eric S. Tellez, CICESE-INFOTEC-CONACyT, Mexico

• Martin Aumüller, ITU Copenhagen, Denmark

• Vladimir Mic, Aarhus University, Denmark

• Edgar Chávez, CICESE, México