The ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS) publishes papers on information retrieval (such as search engines, recommender systems) that contain:

new principled information retrieval models or algorithms with sound empirical validation;
observational, experimental and/or theoretical studies yielding new insights into information retrieval or information seeking;
accounts of applications of existing information retrieval techniques that shed light on the strengths and weaknesses of the techniques;
formalization of new information retrieval or information seeking tasks and of methods for evaluating the performance on those tasks;
development of content (text, image, speech, video, etc) analysis methods to support information retrieval and information seeking;
development of computational models of user information preferences and interaction behaviors;
creation and analysis of evaluation methodologies for information retrieval and information seeking; or
surveys of existing work that propose a significant synthesis.
The information retrieval scope of ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS) appeals to industry practitioners for its wealth of creative ideas, and to academic researchers for its descriptions of their colleagues' work.