-------------------------------------------------------- CALL FOR PAPERS ACL'97/EACL'97 Workshop July 11 or 12, 1997 Madrid, Spain -------------------------------------------------------- "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: 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: cd incoming/workshop97 put 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 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------