FIRST JOINT CALL for Workshop Proposals: ACL/COLING/EMNLP/NAACL 2018

Proposal Submission Deadline: October 22, 2017
Notification of Acceptance: November 17, 2017

The Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), the International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING), the Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP), and the Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (NAACL HLT) invite proposals for workshops to be held in conjunction with ACL 2018, COLING 2018, EMNLP 2018, or NAACL HLT 2018. We solicit proposals on any topic of interest to the ACL communities. Workshops will be held at one of the following conference venues:

ACL 2018 (the 56th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics) will be held in Melbourne, Australia, July 15 - July 20, 2018, with workshops to take place on July 19-20: http://acl2018.org/

COLING 2018 (the 27th International Conference on Computational Linguistics) will be held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, August 20 - August 25, 2018, with workshops to be held on August 20-21, 2018: http://coling2018.org/

NAACL HLT 2018 (the 16th Annual Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies) will be held in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, June 1 - June 6, 2018 with workshops to be held on June 5-6, 2018: http://naacl2018.org/

EMNLP 2018 (the Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing 2018) will be held later in 2018[a] (after the other three conferences). Exact details on dates and venue for EMNLP workshops will be announced later.

SUBMISSION INFORMATION

Proposals should be submitted as PDF documents. Note that submissions should essentially be ready to be turned into a Call for Workshop Papers within one week of notification (see Timelines below).

The proposals should contain:

- A title and brief (2-page max) description of the workshop topic and content. 

- The names, affiliations, and email addresses of the organizers, with one-paragraph statements of their research interests, areas of expertise, and experience in organising workshops and related events.

- A list of Programme Committee members, with an indication of which members have already agreed. It is highly desirable for proposals to have at least 75% of the Programme Committee reviewers confirmed at the time of the submission. Organizers should do their best to estimate the number of submissions (especially for recurring workshops) in order to: (a) ensure a sufficient number of reviewers so that each paper receives 3 reviews, and (b) anticipate that no one is committed to reviewing more than 3[b] papers. This practice is likely to ensure on-time, and more thorough and thoughtful reviews.

- A list of invited speakers, if applicable, with an indication of which ones have already agreed and which are indicative, and sources of funding for the speakers.

- An estimate of the number of attendees.

- A description of any shared tasks associated with the workshop, and estimate of the number of participants.

- A description of special requirements and technical needs.

- The preferred venue(s) (ACL/COLING/NAACL/EMNLP), if any, and description of any constraints (e.g. if the workshop is compatible with only one of these events, logistically, thematically or otherwise)

- If the workshop has been held before, a note specifying where previous workshops were held, how many submissions the workshop received, how many papers were accepted (also specify if they were not regular papers, e.g. shared task system description papers), and how many attendees the workshop attracted.

Note that the only financial support available to workshops is a single free workshop registration for an invited speaker; all other costs must be borne independently by the workshop organizers.

In addition, you will need to specify the following information when you submit via the START System (not in the PDF proposal):

- A very brief advertisement or tagline for the workshop, up to 140 characters, that highlights any key information you wish prospective attendees to know, and which would be suitable to be put onto a web-based survey (see below).

- A URL for the workshop website which will be shown in the web-based survey. 

- A list of organizersí names which will be shown in the web-based survey.

The proposals should be submitted no later than October 22, 2017, 11:59 PM Samoa Standard Time (SST) (UTC/GMT-11). Submission is electronic, using the Softconf START conference management system at https://www.softconf.com/i/acl-workshops2018

The workshop proposals will be evaluated according to their originality and impact, as well as the quality of the organizing team and Programme Committee. In addition, to estimate the attendance of the different workshops, a new voting mechanism will be implemented, where attendees of ACL-affiliated events from the past 3-5 years will be able to vote on which workshops they would like to attend in 2018. (A representative prototype of the survey is shown here, but is subject to change: https://goo.gl/3cuZON.) The overall diversity of the workshops will also be taken into account to ensure the conference program is varied and balanced. The workshop co-chairs will work together to assign workshops to the four conferences, taking into account the location preferences and technical constraints provided by the workshop proposers.

Organizers of accepted proposals will be responsible for publicizing and running the workshop, including reviewing submissions, producing the camera ready workshop proceedings, and organizing the meeting days. It is crucial that organizers commit to all deadlines. In particular, failure to produce the camera ready proceedings on time will lead to the exclusion of the workshop from the unified proceedings and author indexes.  Workshop organizers cannot accept submissions for publication that will be (or have been) published elsewhere, although they are free to set their own policies on simultaneous submission and review. Since the conferences will occur at different times, the timelines for the submission and reviewing of workshop papers, and the preparation of camera-ready copies, will be different for each conference. Suggested timelines for each of the conferences are given below. Workshop organizers should not deviate from this schedule unless absolutely necessary, and with explicit agreement from the relevant Workshop Chairs.

The ACL has a set of policies on workshops. You can find the ACL's general policies on workshops, the financial policy for workshops, and the financial policy for SIG workshops at:
http://aclweb.org/adminwiki/index.php?title=Conference_Handbook 

TIMELINE FOR 2018 WORKSHOPS

Timeline:
October 22, 2017: Proposal Submission Deadline
November 17, 2017: Notification of Acceptance

Individual dates:

* ACL:
Dec 11, 2017: First Call for Workshop Papers
Mar 5, 2018: Second Call for Workshop Papers
April 8, 2018: Workshop Paper Due Date
May 7, 2018: Notification of Acceptance
May 28, 2018: Camera-ready papers due
July 19-20, 2018: Workshop Dates

* COLING:
TBA: First Call for Workshop Papers
TBA: Second Call for Workshop Papers
TBA: Workshop Paper Due Date
TBA: Notification of Acceptance
TBA: Camera-ready papers due
Aug 20-21, 2018: Workshop Dates

* NAACL:
27 November 2017: First Call for Workshop Papers
8 January 2018: Second Call for Workshop Papers
2 March 2018: Workshop Paper Due Date
2 April 2018: Notification of Acceptance
16 April 2018: Camera-ready papers due
5-6 June 2018: Workshop Dates

* EMNLP:
TBA: First Call for Workshop Papers
TBA: Second Call for Workshop Papers
TBA: Workshop Paper Due Date
TBA: Notification of Acceptance
TBA: Camera-ready papers due
TBA: Workshop Dates

WORKSHOP CO-CHAIRS

* ACL:
Brendan O’Connor, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Eva Maria Vecchi, University of Cambridge

* COLING:
Tim Baldwin, University of Melbourne
Yoav Goldberg, Bar Ilan University
Jing Jiang, Singapore Management University

* NAACL:
Marie Meteer, Brandeis University
Jason Williams, Microsoft Research

* EMNLP:
TBA

For inquiries, send email to the workshop organizers at: acl-coling-emnlp-naacl-workshops@googlegroups.com

[a]avoid "Fall" as ambiguous between hemispheres
[b]3 rather than 2?