SRW
Organization ACL-SRW 2008
Introduction
This document has been compiled by the organizers of the ACL-08:HLT Student Research Workshop, Ebru Arisoy (Bogazici University, Turkey), Wolfgang Maier (University of Tübingen, Germany) and Keisuke Inoue (Syracuse University, USA) and faculty advisor Prof. Jan Wiebe (University of Pittsburgh). Its purpose is to share the experiences during the organization and to facilitate the work of future co-chairs.
ACL SRW Organization
In order to make the organization as efficient as possible, we have made the experience that where possible, it is beneficial to appoint at the beginning of the organization one of the co-chairs as the responsible person for a certain subtask. It is this co-chair's duty to ensure that all of the corresponding work gets done. For this purpose, we have tried to isolate all independent subtasks of the workshop organization and describe them in detail here.
Documents
We have compiled all documents sent out during the organization of the SRW.
Timeline Organisation ACL-SRW 2007
Chris Biemann, Violeta Seretan, Ellen Riloff
| Date | Event | Comment |
| October 27, 2006 | 2nd student co-chair acknowledged | Make sure that all co-chairs will be able to travel to the conference. ACL guidelines say that co-chairs must be self-financing. |
| October 31, 2006 | ACL Guidelines available to student co-chairs | http://www.cis.udel.edu/~carberry/ACL/index-conf-handbook.html |
| November 3, 2006 | Start working on the Call for Papers (CfP) | CfP must clearly state a number of things that are different from usual CfPs, regarding student specific issues. Also, try to avoid misunderstandings of previous years: double submission policy, previously published work, minimum/maximum page count, anonymous review. Fix dates for submission and acceptance. It is advisable to use the same dates as the main session. Camera-ready deadline should be at least one week earlier than the main conf camera ready deadline to account for inexperienced formatters. The CfP already contains most of the planning, so be very careful with it and discuss it thoroughly. |
| November 7, 2006 | Ask webmasters to set up the webpage | Webpage should be up as soon as possible and updated as soon as changes occur - otherwise people ask about discrepancies, which causes extra work. |
| November 7, 2006 | Ask ACL Secretary or local organizers to set up a common email address that is forwarded to all co-chairs | This ensures that everyone gets all mails; further, private email addresses are not published on the web which reduces spam (you’ll get a lot of it) |
| November 9, 2006 | Set up a shared spreadsheet document at docs.google | Very useful for putting together lists and other information |
| November 9, 2006 | Communicate CfP to general conference chair | Official calls should be double-checked by the main conf. organization |
| November 10, 2006 | HTML version of CfP policy question: is handled by us | Webmasters ensure uniform layout with the rest of the page, however they might be too busy for that. Clarify! |
| November 10, 2006 | Starting to work on the reviewer candidate list | Collect names together with current email addresses and mark people as senior or junior. Use SRW reviewers from previous years (if they have not already served twice) and ask people you know. We asked 94 people, 70 replied, 6 had non-valid email addresses, 53 accepted. Some people were asked later doe to shortage for some areas (keywords) |
| November 14, 2006 | 1st CfP ok-ed, HTML version ready | |
| November 15, 2006 | common email address up and working | |
| November 16, 2006 | Working on list of keywords | Keywords are good for assigning reviewers to papers and to find out whether all areas a covered. We used a blend of keywords from different ACL conferences as could be seen when submitting a paper via the START system. Our list is in Appendix A. |
| November 17, 2006 | Distribution of 1st CfP | We used the following lists, maybe you find more?
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| November 17, 2006 | CfP on webpage | |
| November 24, 2006 | Reviewer invitation letter sent out to 1st round of reviewer candidates (84) | Letter: see Appendix B |
| November 30, 2006 | Reviewer invitation letter sent out to 2nd round of reviewer candidates (10) | Second round reviewers were selected in anticipation to meet yet underrepresented keywords. Check http://www.elsnet.org/experts/ |
| December 4, 2006 | ACL newsletter nr.1 sent out including CfP | |
| December 7, 2006 | List of reviewers fixed | |
| December 8, 2006 | Thanks for being reviewer - letter sent out, with question about affiliation and spelling | Special characters are heaps of fun in international name lists; name spelling and affiliation should be checked before being published |
| December 12, 2006 | first of a handful of mails that ask for invitation letters for long lists of "students" | It seems to be common to try to get invitation letters for visa via scientific conferences. Prepare a letter stating that once a paper was accepted, there will be an invitation letter, but not earlier. |
| December 12, 2006 | START system submission page up and running | START system is very useful, try to check out the options |
| December 18, 2006 | Preparation of funding proposal to NSF by faculty advisor | Get an idea about how to split the money between students and organization, estimate costs, decide on a best paper award |
| December 19, 2006 | 2nd CfP communicated to include it in ACL newsletter Nr. 2 | |
| December 19, 2006 | 2nd CfP distributed via same lists as 1st CfP | |
| December 19, 2006 | Program committee on webpage | |
| January 3, 2007 | ACL approaching deadlines reminder sent out by ACL | |
| January 10, 2007 | funding proposal communicated to NSF by faculty advisor | |
| January 15, 2007 | last CfP sent out on all lists | |
| January 23, 2007 | Submission deadline | We received 52 submissions, some not formatted right, some not anonymized, some not meeting the standards. We ignored formatting issues if they were not too far off, asked to re-submit anonymized versions (by email to us) and did not do anything about the standards. A min page count would have been nice. |
| January 23, 2007 | First of several mails asking for deadline extension | To be answered negatively, see ACL policy |
| January 29, 2007 | Finished assignments reviewers-papers | This took a while, be sure o be available in that time. Also, check for conflicts of interests (same affiliation) |
| January 30, 2007 | Reviewing process started | |
| January 31, 2007 | Minor changes in reviewer assignment due to conflicts of interest (pointed out by reviewers) | |
| March 1, 2007 | Clarifying schedule, room, poster arrangements and student lunch | We had very good attendance and feedback with holding the SRW as a parallel session to main and putting the posters just along the main conference posters |
| March 8, 2007 | Sent out reminder about review deadline | |
| March 10, 2007 | Review deadline | |
| March 14, 2007 | all reviews available | |
| March 15, 2007 | Starting to discuss about acceptance | |
| March 20, 2007 | clarify double submissions with those indicating it and with ACL paper chair | Do NOT allow a paper to be accepted in both main and SRW. Also, try to search for publications with similar title from the same author to find out about double publication. This is a bit tedious, but proved to be necessary. |
| March 23, 2007 | Accepted papers decided for posters /oral presentation | |
| March 23, 2007 | Timing, rooms etc. fixed | Could have been earlier to take out the stress |
| March 23, 2007 | Notification of acceptance/rejection sent out | |
| March 29, 2007 | List of accepted papers published on webpage | |
| April 1, 2007 | Sent out preliminary information about funding | This should be done early because of the Air America Act for NSF-funded events. Do not promise any amounts, rather indicate something like "approximately 75% of expenses". |
| April 13, 2007 | ACL newsletter Nr. 3 sent out | |
| April 15, 2007 | Funding from NSF arrived | |
| April 16, 2007 | Sent out detailed information about NSF-compliant receipts to participants | We offered to have the flights checked by a U.S. travel agency to confirm that there are REALLY no U.S. carriers flying from Europe to Europe :) This should have been sorted out earlier, since some people already had booked their flights. |
| April 16, 2007 | NSF logo on sponsor page | |
| April 19, 2007 | Clarifying poster sizes and orientation | |
| April 20, 2007 | Instructions from publication chair arrived | The proceedings preparation software needs some training - better do that before time gets tight |
| April 25, 2007 | Camera ready deadline remainder with detailed formatting instructions ... | ... which will not be followed in most cases, still. Mention the max page count explicitly again, since people will be confused about differing main and SRW paper length for oral and poster presentations
May 2, 2007 first round of revisions for camera-ready papers Some people might need very detailed descriptions what they did wrong. Take care for paper size, this does not show well when only opening papers - print them all to see margin differences. |
| May 4, 2007 | Deadline for 1st round of revisions. This was also ACL main camera-ready deadline | |
| May 4, 2007 | started discussing about how to get panelists for feedback | since panelists should be present at the conference, it makes sense to scan the list of accepted papers for well-known names. Also, the organizing committee might be a source. It did not prove useful in previous years to use conference-independent directories like ELSNET, since most people are not attending. Also check co-chairs and participants of satellite events! |
| May 5, 2007 | ACL newsletter nr. 5 and hotel reservation opening | accommodation should be recommended to participants in order to plan the money and to avoid too high expectations or fluctuations. The stipend does not have to cover accommodation during all satellite events, but should cover the main conf. |
| May 7, 2007 | Deadline for 2nd round of revisions | Our mails were full of the word URGENT. Still, 9 out of 16 had changes to do |
| May 8, 2007 | Sent out poster size information to poster presenters | Check with poster chair, and ensure SRW posters keep hanging as long as other posters. |
| May 9, 2007 | Starting to assemble the proceedings | allow for some hours of instruction reading before actually doing it. Ask about the cover page: is the SRW part of a companion volume or a separate book? |
| May 8, 2007 | Sent out invitation letters to panelists candidates, see Appendix | We asked to reply with a list of papers they would comment on. See Appendix C for letter. |
| May 10, 2007 | Deadline for 3rd round or revisions | Revisions were done on a point-to point basis. Be sure to check your email regularly in these days to avoid delays. |
| May 12, 2007 | starting to write the preface for the proceedings volume | We decided to have also short summaries of papers. We could have done this earlier to avoid time problems with the proceedings |
| May 14, 2007 | Official proceedings deadline | |
| May 15, 2007 | Information about schedule coming in from general chair | since this is necessary for the proceedings, this was a bit late. Had to decide how to group papers rather quickly |
| May 15, 2007 | Finalizing date and time for the poster session | Although posters hopefully keep hanging, there is need for an allotted time slot so panelists (and others) can find presenters. Should be parallel to one of the main poster sessions. |
| May 15, 2007 | Call for panelist assignment | We had a great response for panelists and needed to assign a remaining 5 papers to those who had not expressed their preferences, so we asked the unassigned panelists. |
| May 16, 2007 | First inquiries about travel grants are coming in | It would have been easier to send out information on grants as soon as possible and as detailed as possible. Estimate the cost per participant well beforehand (e.g. for different continents) and give the students rough figures as well as what they exactly will be able to reimburse. Answering inquires on a point-to-point basis eats up too much time |
| May 17, 2007 | Finalizing Proceedings | Although late, we were doing well compared to other workshops :) Sorting out errors beforehand saves a lot of time later after delivering the thought-to-be-final version. |
| May 18, 2007 | Proceedings approved by publication chair | |
| May 18, 2007 | Starting to work on ACL meeting report draft | Almost missed it! Luckily, versions of previous years help a lot. |
| May 22, 2007 | ACL-related report deadline | |
| May 22, 2007 | Sending out paper assignments for reviewers | Check with main chairs for schedules of the panelist's talks. We unfortunately had to refuse 1 panelist since the only paper of interest to him ran in parallel to his presentation. |
| May 23, 2007 | Sent out information about reimbursements and asked about estimates from students | Should explicitly mention various forms of travel (car, train, plane), should ask people to find a cheap hotel. Should clarify how registration is handled: in previous years SRW participants registered as student volunteers without having to work but without having to pay. The NSF grant was then used to pay registration fees to ACL directly. We let students register regularly and reimbursed later, but would not recommend this for the future: some missed the early registration deadline, and all had to pay the membership fee. |
| June 1, 2007 | HTML version of program available, also abstracts of oral presentation and posters, including panelists | Actually, having the abstracts online took until June, 18, which was definitely too late. |
| June 1, 2007 | Estimation of costs is done | We were lucky to have less long-distance participants than anticipated |
| June 5, 2007 | Notifications about panelists to participants and about schedule | |
| June 5, 2007 | Choose your Menu for the Exec++ dinner | |
| June 5, 2007 | ACL newsletter Nr .5 (II) | |
| June 12, 2007 | Notes for the exec++ dinner come in | Prepare a very short presentation about the SRW. The shorter, the more happier the execs. |
| June 12, 2007 | Invitation to post conference wrap up breakfast comes in | |
| June 18, 2007 | Worries about the student lunch | We were not sure whether we organize it or the local chairs take care of it. Further, we did not know who will pay for it. Further, it was forgotten to be announced in the program and had to be included in errata. Don't forget the student lunch! Clarify who's responsible well beforehand. |
| June 20, 2007 | Slides for exec++ and business meeting prepared | |
| June 23, 2007 | Going to Prague! | |
| June 25, 2007 | Poster Session SRW | Great response! One panelist did not arrive, the panel was then hold on 27th. |
| June 25, 2007 | Exec++ dinner | Yummy |
| June 26, 2007 | Oral Session SRW | Even greater response. People had to leave the room because there were no places to stand (let alone to sit). Next time, ask for a bigger room (like all other rooms) and a microphone (like all other rooms). Be sure to keep the schedule for people that switch sessions |
| June 27, 2007 | Business meeting | |
| June 28, 2007 | Wrap up breakfast | Be sure to mention behalves of students - you're their only representative there. |
| June 29, 2007 | First of many "thank you" letters from participants | :) All that was for a purpose :) |
| June 29, 2007 | First of numerous enquiries about the precise reimbursement procedure | Check with Priscilla on the conference how to proceed. Fix a strategy, even if everybody's busy. Reimbursement got quite delayed because everyone went on holiday and nobody knew where to send the stuff to. |
| July, 25 2007 | ACL newsletter nr. 6 | |
| August 4, 2007 | Sent detailed reimbursement information where to send what | Could have been one month earlier. Even better would be to hand out instructions (or even reimbursement forms) to the participants on-site. |
| August 24, 2007 | Sorting out reimbursement and fixing upper limits | Some people simply send all receipts and wait how much they get (which is common in some countries), so better acknowledge before Priscilla sends out cheques |
| August 30, 2007 | First cheques arriving | |
| October 4, 2007 | Reimbursement finished | To cash in ACL cheques is very expensive in some countries :( |
Appendix A
Keywords for categorizing papers and reviewer’s fields of expertise
Acoustic modeling . Audio and video retrieval . Cognitive modeling . Content-based/collaborative information filtering . Corpora and treebanks . Cross-language information retrieval . Dialogue . Discourse . Discriminative training . Distributed information retrieval . Evaluation metrics and methodologies . Grammar development and engineering . Grammar extraction and induction . Grammar formalisms . Human/machine dialogue systems . Human/human conversation and meeting processing . Inference and entailment . Information extraction . Information retrieval models . Interactive/Personalized information retrieval . Intranet/Enterprise Search . Knowledge acquisition . Language identification . Language modeling . Language resources . Name . Learning techniques for language processing . Lexical acquisition . Lexical/Pronunciation modeling . Lexical semantics . Machine translation . Mathematical models of language . Morphology . Multi-lingual generation . Multi-lingual resources . Multi-lingual speech recognition . Multi-word expressions/collocations . Multimodal representations and processing . Natural language interfaces . NLP applications . Ontology learning . Parsing . Paraphrase . Phonology . Pragmatics . Psycholinguistics . Question answering . Name . Rich transcription . Semantics . Semantic distance . Semantic role labeling . Sentiment analysis . Surface realization . Syntax . NLP/IR applications . Speech generation . Speech mining . Speech recognition . Speech summarization . Speech-based interfaces . Spoken language understanding . Text alignment . Text categorization and clustering . Text generation . Text/Web mining . Name . Text planning . Text representation . Text summarization . Topic detection and tracking . Unsupervised learning . Web information retrieval . Web technology . Word sense disambiguation
Appendix B: Invitation letter for reviewers
Subject: Inviting you to join the program committee for the ACL-07 Student Research Workshop.
Dear colleague,
We would like to invite you to serve on the Program Committee of the Student Research Workshop at ACL 2007. The event will be held alongside the main conference in Prague, Czech Republic, on June 25-27, 2007.
The committee will consist of a cross-section of students and experienced researchers, representing all interests within the ACL community. You will be asked to review papers from student researchers. This is an important responsibility as you will not only be able to provide students with an opportunity to showcase their work, but also offer all students who submit invaluable feedback on their work in progress. Initially, we anticipate you being assigned 3-4 papers to review.
If you accept this invitation (and we sincerely hope you do), we would be grateful if you could include your areas of interest in your reply, as chosen from the keywords below.
KEYWORDS ....
We would be grateful if you could let us know if you can serve, and under what areas
you feel you can review, as soon as possible. We are looking forward to your
participation and know that you can help make the Student Workshop at ACL 2007 a
success.
Below we are including the call for papers. Please, contact us if you need any
further information.
Sincerely,
Appendix C: Invitation to be a panelist
Subject: ACL-07 SRW panelist?
Dear Colleague,
We, the organisers of the Student Research Workshop, would like to invite you, as an accomplished researcher in the field of Computational Linguistics, to participate in the panel of the Student Research Workshop at ACL-07.
It is a tradition at the ACL Student Research Workshop that after their presentation, student authors receive feedback from a senior researcher panelists. A panelist has read the 6-page paper of a student, is familiar with both the related research and with advising students, attends the presentation of the student and gives about 5 minutes feedback directly after the presentation or in front of the student's poster. This feedback should enable the student to improve her/his work and should give valuable hints on how to continue with his/her research.
The ACL Student Research Workshop will take place on Tuesday, June 26th during the main ACL conference in Prague. If you will attend the conference and would probably be interested in serving as a panelist, please respond to this mail within one week. You can have a look at the student abstracts at http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dfpdxs6h_6df4f53. It would be nice if you could indicate 1-4 preferences, which we will try to follow when assigning panelists to students.
As a reward for serving as a panelist, your name will be mentioned on the ACL07-SRW page - this is unfortunately the only the honour we can offer you. But maybe you also find it interesting to get in contact with promising student researchers working in your area.
If you cannot attend ACL or you don't feel like being a panelist, please forward this mail to other senior researchers that might be willing to serve.
If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us.
Sincerely...