"Advances in Information Retrieval" is a comprehensive collection of research papers documenting the proceedings of the 38th European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR 2016). This conference took place in March 2016 in Padua, Italy, and brought together leading scholars and practitioners in the field of information retrieval research. The volume includes 42 full papers and 28 poster contributions, carefully selected from a total of 284 submitted works. Additionally, the book features three keynote speeches and six demonstration papers, as well as the results of four workshops and four tutorial papers. The topics covered are diverse, ranging from social contexts and news to machine learning, ranking methods, and evaluation methodologies. This publication is a valuable resource for anyone looking to engage with the latest developments and challenges in the field of information retrieval technologies.