ACL-00 Conference:
The 38th Annual Meeting of the Association for
Computational Linguistics
Hong Kong
October 3--6, 2000
The Association for Computational Linguistics would like to encourage
the submission of papers on substantial, original, and unpublished
research on all aspects of computational linguistics. To broaden both
the thematic coverage and geographical origin of submissions, we are
continuing the special theme sessions format introduced in the 1999
ACL conference. Some proportion of the conference will be given over
to special sessions, somewhat like a special issue of a journal,
organized around themes proposed by members of the NLP community. The
aim is to incorporate some of the intensity and excitement of the
traditional pre/post-conference workshops, without replacing those
workshops---we expect, as has become traditional, that there will also
be a set of workshops that will remain separate from the main
meeting. This call invites proposals for thematic sessions in
accordance with the considerations below; a final Call For Papers,
that includes the list of selected themes will be sent out in
mid-January.
What is a Thematic Session?
We are soliciting proposals for themes that will provide a sufficient
number of quality papers to form one or two sessions (3-4 papers per
session) in the main conference. Proposers of accepted themes, who
will become the chairs of those sessions, will have similar
responsibilities to those of workshop organizers in terms of arranging
reviewing and the delivery of camera ready copy. However, the papers
will be scheduled as part of the main sessions and will be published
as part of the main conference proceedings. The quality of theme
papers is expected to be equal to that of the papers in the general
sessions of the conference. In terms of subject area coverage, we
expect thematic sessions will be closer to workshop topic areas in
focus.
Format of Theme Proposals
The theme proposals should be approximately two pages in length and
should be divided into the following headings.
Chair Details: Name, address, email, telephone number, fax
Theme Title:
List of Topics: This should include some keywords describing the
topics to be covered by the theme. This information will be used
primarily to check for overlap with other proposed themes.
Summary: A brief description of the proposed subject area, and summary
of why the inclusion of the proposed theme would meet the aims of
theme sessions.
Viability of Theme: Given the number of papers that can populate one
or two sessions at the conference and the typical ACL acceptance
rates, to be viable a theme should receive 10--30 submissions. In this
section, proposers of the theme should provide evidence that
sufficient number of submissions can be expected. Such evidence for
the viability of the theme might include the citation of workshops,
symposia, special journal issues etc. in the theme topic. In
situations of emerging fields, such evidence may not be available. In
lieu of such evidence, proposers might provide evidence for an
existing community interested in the topic by providing a list of
people who have indicated interest in the theme. Of course, proposers
can offer other types of evidence to show that a sufficient number of
submissions can be expected.
Proposed Review Committee: Each paper submitted should be reviewed by
at least three people. As part of the proposal, proposers should
suggest a potential review committee who are likely to serve on the
committee if the proposal is accepted. The list would also demonstrate
the spread of interest in the area in the community, encouraging both
international participation and the participation of a broad range of
researchers, including both senior members of the community and
graduate students.
Theme proposals should be submitted to the email address provided
below. Proposers of themes are encouraged to indicate their plans in
advance of the submission date by sending email to this
address. Informal enquiries as to what might work as a theme can also
be directed to this address. Possible themes might be topics like:
NLP and Information Retrieval (or topics that include a community in
the periphery of language technology); Methods for Asian Language
Processing; Computational Linguistic Issues in Alternate/Augmentative
Communication; Spoken Dialog Systems; Multi-lingual Language
Processing. These examples are provided only as indications of the
variety of topic areas that will be considered. A list of theme topics
included in the ACL 1999 conference can be found by following appropriate
links from http://www.mri.mq.edu.au/conf/acl99/.
Important Dates
This call issued: December 3, 1999
Theme submissions deadline: January 7, 2000
Notification of selected themes: January 17, 2000
Call for papers: January 20, 2000
Paper submissions deadline: March 31, 2000 (approx. date)
Notification of acceptance: June 15, 2000 (approx. date)
General Submission Questions
Co-chairs for the ACL-99 program are Chang-Ning Huang and K. Vijay-Shanker.
All queries regarding the program should be sent to acl2k@cis.udel.edu;
this forwards to both co-chairs.
Submission Format
Theme proposals should ideally submitted in ascii by email to
acl2k@cis.udel.edu with the subject: "ACL99 THEME PROPOSAL".
PostScript, PDF and Word files will be accepted if they print on the
first try. Hardcopy proposals should be faxed or mailed to both of
the chairs, clearly labeled "ACL99 THEME PROPOSAL". Proposals should
be received by 5pm GMT on January 7, 2000.
Chang-Ning Huang (Co-Chair) K. Vijay-Shanker (Co-Chair)
Microsoft Research, China Dept. of Computer Science
5F, Beijing Sigma Center University of Delaware
No.49, Zhichun Road Newark, DE 19716, USA
Beijing 100080, P.R.C
cnhuang@microsoft.com vijay@cis.udel.edu
Tel: (86-10)6261-7711 -5760 Tel: +1 302 831 1952
Fax: (86-10)8809-7305 Fax: +1 302 831 8458
Hitoshi Iida (General Chair) Aravind K. Joshi (Honorary Chair)
Speech and Language Information Department of Computer and
Processing Lab Information Sciences
SONY Computer Science Labs, Inc. University of Pennsylvania
Tokyo 141-0022, Japan Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA
iida@csl.sony.co.jp joshi@linc.cis.upenn.edu
Tel: +81 3 5448 4380 Tel: +1 215 898 0359
Fax: +81 3 5447 1942 Fax: +1 215 573 9247