The Cross-Language Evaluation Forum, or CLEF, is an organization promoting research in multilingual information access (currently focusing on European languages). Its specific functions are to maintain an underlying framework for testing information retrieval systems, and creating repositories of data for researchers to use in developing comparable standards.[1] The organization holds a forum meeting every September in Europe. Prior to each forum, participants receive a set of challenge tasks. The tasks are designed to test various aspects of information retrieval systems and encourage their development. Groups of researchers propose and organize campaigns to satisfy those tasks. The results are used as benchmarks for the state of the art in the specific areas. [2] , [3]
For example, the 2010 medical retrieval tasks focuses on retrival of computed tomography, MRI, and radiographic images.[4]