Selected Papers from the 18th International Conference on Similarity Search and Applications (SISAP 2025)

Call for Papers – Selected Papers from the 18th International Conference on Similarity Search and Applications (SISAP 2025)

Journal: Information Systems
Publisher: Elsevier
Journal metrics: Impact Factor 3.4, CiteScore 9.8
Special issue deadline: 28 February 2026

This special issue will feature extended, high‑quality versions of the best papers presented at the 18th International Conference on Similarity Search and Applications (SISAP 2025), held at Reykjavík University, Iceland, 1–3 October 2025. SISAP is a long‑standing, CORE‑B‑ranked conference series dedicated to content‑based and feature‑based similarity search, uniting theory, design, and real‑world applications. Through this issue, Information Systems will showcase cutting‑edge research that advances the foundations, algorithms, and practical uses of similarity search.

Why this issue matters

• Similarity search underpins many modern data‑driven systems, including multimedia retrieval, bioinformatics, machine learning, and large‑scale information systems.

• SISAP 2025 papers have already undergone rigorous conference review; the extended versions in this special issue will add at least 30% new content, deepening contributions and broadening their impact.

• By curating these works in an established systems‑oriented journal, the issue reinforces the bridging of theory, algorithms, and applications in similarity‑search research.

Scope and topics of interest

The special issue welcomes extended versions of SISAP 2025 papers that substantially expand on the original conference work and contribute to:

• Advanced similarity search algorithms

  • Novel search heuristics, approximate search methods, and efficient neighbourhood queries.

  • Metric and non‑metric space models, distance measures, and embedding‑based search.

• Efficient indexing and retrieval techniques

  • Scalable index structures, graph‑based indexes, inverted and compact indexes, and distributed indexing.

  • Trade‑offs between accuracy, speed, memory footprint, and scalability.

• Applications across domains

  • Similarity search in multimedia (images, video, audio), bioinformatics, document retrieval, recommendation systems, and machine‑learning pipelines.

  • Domain‑specific case studies demonstrating practical deployment and performance gains.

• Performance evaluation, benchmarks, and test‑beds

  • New benchmark suites, evaluation frameworks, and comparative analyses of similarity‑search methods.

  • Reproducibility and reproducible experimentation in similarity search.

• Theoretical foundations of similarity processing

  • Complexity analysis, formal models of similarity, guarantees for approximation, and connections with metric and non‑metric geometry.

  • Theoretical insights that inform better algorithm and index design.

Submissions must be invited by the Guest Editors and include at least 30% new content (e.g., additional analysis, experiments, comparisons, or theoretical extensions) beyond the original SISAP 2025 paper.

Guest editors

• Dr Vladimir Mic, Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark
  Email: vmic@imada.sdu.dk

• Dr Nicola Messina, Institute of Information Science and Technologies, Italian National Research Council (CNR), Italy
  Email: nicola.messina@isti.cnr.it

• Prof Giuseppe Amato, Institute of Information Science and Technologies, Italian National Research Council (CNR), Italy
  Email: giuseppe.amato@isti.cnr.it

• Prof Agma Juci M. Traina, Computer Science Department, University of São Paulo, Brazil
  Email: agma@icmc.usp.br

Submission details

• Submission portal: Elsevier Editorial Manager for Information Systems:
  https://www.editorialmanager.com/infosys/default.aspx

• When submitting, select article type “VSI: SISAP 2025”.

• Key dates:

  • Submission opens: 2 January 2026

  • Submission deadline: 28 February 2026

  • Editorial acceptance deadline: 28 October 2026

• Manuscripts must follow the journal’s Guide for Authors and undergo standard peer review.

• Invited authors with further questions should contact the Guest Editors directly.

This special issue is ideal for researchers who presented at SISAP 2025 and wish to expand their work into a journal‑level, peer‑reviewed contribution in the broad field of information systems and similarity search.

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