Discussion of the Impact of GenAI on Academic Search (Canada Week Part 2)

Dear all,

We are looking forward to tomorrow's Meetup with Adam and Yiran, and I can tell you that much: they have safely arrived in Regensburg.

Now, here is some great news: our Canada Week continues as we will welcome Orland Hoeber from the University of Regina to share his infinite wisdom on interaction search, UX design principles, the impact of generative AI on the field and much more with us! He suggested we do this in a flipped-classroom setting. Do do this effectively, I have added a title and some background on the topic together with a link for some further reading.

We know, it's a bit short notice but nevertheless hope that you can make it to campus for lunchtime on Monday. This is more suitable as an in-person event so we do not plan to open a Zoom link.

See you tomorrow and/or on Monday,
Udo & David

P.S.: You can still sign up for tomorrow's talk.

P.P.S.: Here are the details for Monday:

Title:
A Discussion of How Generative AI is Changing the Nature of Academic Search

Chair:
Dr. Orland Hoeber
Department of Computer Science
University of Regina
Canada

Background:
The nature of academic search is rapidly changing due to the widespread availability of
generative AI. Searching within the academic literature has traditionally been considered a
complex task, with a high degree of ambiguity and unclear criteria for when the task is
considered complete. Academic search platforms (e.g., Consensus, Elicit, Google Scholar Labs)
are rapidly adopting generative AI to simplify much of this complexity. They can search broadly
within the academic literature, synthesize what has been found, and present clear and concise
explanations. In doing so, the activity of academic searching has changed from exploration,
discovery, sensemaking, and learning to asking an AI assistant for answers that are quickly
forgotten. If we look at academic search in isolation, there are clear and obvious benefits in
terms of efficiency. However, if we consider the various contexts in which academic search is
conducted, this efficiency is not necessarily beneficial.
In this interactive discussion, we will examine this changing nature of academic search from the
perspectives of transparency and trust, credibility and research integrity, human agency and
friction, and mechanisms for fostering higher-order cognitive processes. To prepare for the
meeting, we encourage attendees to think about how their own practice of searching within
the academic literature has changed in recent years. Those interested in learning what others
from the interactive information retrieval community (including the speaker) think about these
topics may wish to read the SIGIR Forum Report on CHIIR 2026 Workshop on Generative AI and
Academic Search.

Biography:
Dr. Orland Hoeber is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of
Regina (Canada), and co-founder of Dilex Search. His primary research interest is at the
intersection of interactive information retrieval and information visualization. He has an active
research team working on the design, development, and study of visual and interactive
software to support exploration, analysis, reasoning, and discovery in a broad range of
information-centric domains. His most recent research has focused on supporting exploratory
search within academic and public digital libraries (funded by NSERC Discovery and Alliance
grants). He is an advocate for information and AI literacy, data sovereignty, and maintaining
human agency in the age of generative AI. He is a member of the Association for Computing
Machinery (ACM) and the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIST).