[1] From: Jill C Burstein <jburstein@ets.org> (115)
Subject: ACL 97/EACL 97 Workshop **Second Call for Papers**
SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS
ACL'97/EACL'97 Workshop
July 12, 1997
Madrid, Spain
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"From Research to Commercial Applications:
Making NLP Technology Work in Practice"
Success in the marketplace is one form of validation for NLP
techniques and underlying theories. The broad vision of this workshop
is to bring together researchers to discuss commercial or
commercial-bound systems that use NLP for either text or speech. We
are interested in learning about systems that show promise in re-using
NLP techniques, and in the process of technology transfer for NLP
applications. Another topic of interest in this workshop is
industry-based practical considerations involving NLP technology.
The workshop should invoke discussion about experiences and
problems -- technical, logistic, or cultural -- among people
working on operational and commercial NLP applications.
The workshop will begin a dialogue among researchers to explore issues
in technology transfer and the re-use of domain-specific systems. New
applications could get leverage from using successful existing NLP
technologies. The ability to re-use NLP technology for diverse
applications should not only give the application a solid grounding,
but should also save time and money. For example, text generation
techniques are being used to build prototypes for essay analysis by
Educational Testing Service. Other types of NLP technology re-use
need to be identified for different applications. Closely related to
the re-use of domain-specific technology is the issue of constructing
general purpose tools that can be shared by the community, e.g., for
tokenization, proper-noun detection, tagging, NP-identification, etc.
Another purpose of the workshop is to explore industry-based
practicalities that often guide the design of NLP technology.
General practicalities that might be discussed are customization
and trade-offs between accuracy and other requirements,
such as speed, and ease of use. For example, determining the
appropriate balance between reporting false positives and
false negatives in information retrieval; what depth/breadth
of coverage is "enough" in grammar checking; and how can
adaptive systems, such as speaker-dependent speech recognizers,
train themselves to the user without becoming obtrusive.
Discussion of the issues above would help to create connections
between both academic and industry-based research efforts to build a
solid infrastructure for NLP technology re-use and lead to a deeper
understanding of commercial NLP potential.
WORKSHOP ORGANIZATION:
Presentations will last for 20 minutes, followed by a 10 minute
discussion period. Papers will be organized around themes. Ideally,
we would like to include the following sessions:
1. Commercial/commercial-bound systems using NLP
2. Software re-use
3. Technology transfer
SUBMISSIONS:
Authors should submit a full length paper (not exceeding 3,200 words,
exclusive of references) and must include a descriptive abstract of
about 200 words. Electronic submissions are encouraged and should
be submitted as described below. The title page should include
title of the paper,names, addresses, e-mail address, telephone and
fax number of all authors. Any correspondence will be addressed to
the first author.
FORMAT FOR SUBMISSION:
Papers should be original work. Papers may be submitted either
electronically or in hard copy. Electronic or hard-copy
submissions must use the ACL submission style (aclsub.sty)
retrievable from the ACL LISTSERV server via anonymous
ftp:
ftp ftp.cs.columbia.edu
Name: anonymous
Password: <your email address>
cd acl-l/ACL97
get aclsub.sty
Electronic submissions should be mailed to jburstein@ets.org
or ftp to:
ftp clarity.princeton.edu
Name: anonymous
Password: <your e-mail address>
cd incoming/workshop97
put <name of your paper*>
Electronic submissions must either be a) plain ascii text,
b) a single postscript file, or c) a single latex file
following the ACL-97 submission style sheet (see ftp site above).
* Please use the following naming conventions. The filename is
the last name of the first author:
smith.ps the .ps version of the paper
smith.ascii the .ascii version of the paper
(if postscript not available)
smith.author the .ascii file of the title page
(title, authors names, addresses, abstract)
Hard copy submissions must be received by March 10. Send to:
Jill Burstein
ETS, MS 11-R
Rosedale Road
Princeton, NJ 08541
USA
Tel: (609)734-5823
REQUIREMENTS:
A paper accepted for presentation cannot be presented or have
been presented at any other meeting. Please indicate in your
submission if you have submitted your paper to another conference.
SCHEDULE:
Submissions Deadline: March 10, 1997
Notification Date: April 16, 1997
Camera ready copy due: April 28, 1997
PROGRAM CHAIRS:
Jill Burstein, Educational Testing Service
Claudia Leacock, Princeton University
ORGANIZING AND PROGRAM COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Andrew Golding, Mitsubishi Electric
Mary Dee Harris, Language Technology, Inc.
Kevin Knight, USC/ISI
Karen Kukich, Bellcore
Lisa Rau, SRA International
Yael Ravin, IBM, T.J. Watson Research Center
Susanne Wolff, Educational Testing Service
Wlodek Zadrozny, IBM, T.J. Watson Research Center