The IRF focuses on large scale information retrieval and industrial relevance.
In the short term, the IRF has chosen patent data as the basis to build a reference system because of their specifics in terms of complexity, volume and strategic importance, as well as the particular needs of patent searchers (high recall).
The IRF has launched two evaluation tracks dedicated to Intellectual Property within the two major international evaluation workshops in the USA and Europe: TREC-CHEM (Chemistry track) and CLEF-IP (Intellectual Property track).
Currently, the IRF is engaged in the following research activities, together with leading universities like Sheffield, UMass Amherst, Glasgow, Radboud Nijmegen, Queen Mary University of London and other academic partners like Fondazione Ugo Bordoni:
Data Representation
Visualisation of search results
Next generation search
Patent search
Research Projects
Semantic Annotation
Impressions Video
