DESERE: The 2nd Workshop on Decentralized Search and Recommendation

Abstract

The growing demand for data ownership and privacy is reshaping how information is accessed, managed, integrated, and recommended. Building on the inaugural DESERE workshop at The Web Conference 2024, this second edition advances research on Decentralised Search and Recommendation platforms such as Personal Online Datastores (PODs), where users retain control of their data and explicitly manage permissions. As ecosystems decentralise, traditional information retrieval must be revisited while standards for new techniques and system designs are developed to ensure efficient, accurate, and privacy-preserving search. The Second DESERE workshop at CIKM 2025 focuses on infrastructures and retrieval algorithms for user-controlled data. It convenes a cross-disciplinary community spanning data retrieval, management and integration, semantic technologies, recommendation systems, privacy-aware computing, and search efficiency to explore approaches that prioritize user agency, data ownership, and scalable retrieval across PODs and related architectures. Through paper presentations, panels, and interactive sessions, the workshop will highlight challenges, opportunities, and solutions for privacy-preserving IR. These discussions are especially relevant to domains where user-centric design and data stewardship are critical-such as personal finance, education, and high-stakes areas like criminal justice and health.