ACL Conference Proceedings

This page is intended for Book Chairs: Conference, Workshop, and Demo chairs who need to put together a book for inclusion in the ACL proceedings.

How to produce proceedings for ACL Conferences and Workshops

Previous document: I'm a Book Chair, so what am I supposed to do?

tl;dr

Your goal is to get to the last step, Generate All, under the Generate tab, without any errors.

It has to look good and abide by the ACL paper and style guidelines. It's up to you to make sure it does.

Important Details

1. Your Softconf workshop abbreviation is on this spreadsheet, under "Softconf".
2. Check that spreadsheet to make sure your workshop name is the precise name of the workshop, in order to get the ISBN.
3. Based on the finalized workshop name, we will update the spreadsheet to give you your ISBN.

Introduction

You will need your ACL ID Prefix (henceforth, called Bibtex URL), and your ISBN number. You can find those in the ACL 2017 Workshops google doc, once you have verified your workshop name. ISBNs are assigned based on the name of your workshop, so make sure your name is good.

You should be able to produce your proceedings entirely within the START manager console. Once your book builds without error using the All button under the Generate tab, let the publications chairs know by e-mailing us at acl-pub-chairs@googlegroups.com. We will collect the books online using START. There is no need to e-mail us any zipped files.

We will update this page periodically with ACL 2017-specific details and answers to frequently asked questions as they arise. If you encounter any problems with this process, you can email us, but also remember this is all volunteer-run.

Instructions

To get to the Softconf ACL Proceedings Generator:

• Go to your workshop's softconf website: https://www.softconf.com/acl2017/${WSAbbreviation}, where <math>{WSAbbreviation} is your [Softconf workshop abbreviation](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1x1RtUjAy-S_YhvTXWTrUc5xs9_4HkF0pOGynhRE963M/edit?usp=sharing).

• Go to the Publication Console (/pub): https://www.softconf.com/acl2017/</math>{WSAbbreviation}/pub

• Under Conference Program, follow the ACLPUB link.
  

This will bring you to the url: https://www.softconf.com/acl2017/${WSAbbreviation}/pub/scmd.cgi?scmd=ACLPUB

• Now you should see the ACLPUB Proceedings Generator.

The Softconf ACL Proceedings Generator creates two things:

• Book proceedings pdf, based in latex The files used in the generation of the book proceedings are shown in Table 1.
• Online proceedings, based in html Compiling the book proceedings end-to-end also produces the online proceedings. The files used in the generation of the online proceedings are shown in Table 2.

Next we walk through how to use the Softconf ACL Proceedings Generator to create the book proceedings and the online proceedings.

If you'd prefer to edit files directly, go the Expert Route.

Table 1. Files used in book proceedings generation.

| File | Role in Proceedings | | ----------------- | --------------------------- | | titlepage.tex | Title Page. | | copyright.tex | Copyright Page. Where ISBN and Sponsor Logos go. | | preface.tex | Preface Page. Welcomes readers to the proceedings and gives some detail on the event. | | organizers.tex | Organizers Page. Lists the organizing committee, program committee, invited speakers, panelists, etc. | | toc.tex | Table of Contents Page. This will be filled out automatically, but you can customize if you want. | | program.tex | Schedule Page. This too fill be filled out automatically, but you can customize if you want.| | spine.tex | Book Spine, for use in the printed handbook. | | citation-stamp.tex | The Official Proceedings Footer that gives the citation details of the conference. Appears on the bottom of the first page of each article in the proceedings. |
| order | Determines the author ordering in the proceedings and the schedule. | | copyright-signatures | Authors' copyright signatures, so the conference can print their work. |

Table 2. Files used in online proceedings generation.

File	Role in Proceedings
index.html	Home page with list of papers and link to book proceedings.
program.html	Schedule Page, with links to papers. This fill be filled out automatically based on the order file, but you can customize if you want.
authors.html	Page of the authors, with links to entries in index.html.
order	Determines the author ordering in program.html.
copyright-signatures	Authors' copyright signatures, so the conference can print their work.

Table 3. The tabs in the Softconf ACLPub Proceedings Generator.

Tab Name	What That Means	Files
Templates	Proceedings Front Matter Files	Book Proceedings Files: titlepage.tex, copyright.tex, preface.tex, organizers.tex, citation-stamp.tex, spine.tex, book.tex
		Book Proc Header Files: toc.tex.head, program.tex.head, cd.tex.head
		Online Proc Header Files: index.html.head, authors.html.head, program.html.head, unified-authors.html.head , mainindex.html.head
Dwnl Templates	All Proceedings .tex and media files	.zip files containing all .tex and media files, order file
Margins	Margins	All author .pdf files
Order	Schedule & Author Ordering	order file
CDROM	THE MOST IMPORTANT TAB	.html files for online proceedings, and organization for the aclweb anthology's online pdfs.
Program	Schedule - to Customize	program.tex
Toc	Table of Contents - to Customize	toc.tex
Generate	Compile full proceedings	copyright-signatures, .tgz file of book and online proceedings.

Step by Step Compilation in the Softconf ACLPUB Proceedings Generator

Jump to Step:

1: Initial Generation · 2: Margins · 3: Dwnl Templates · 4: Order 5: Templates · 6: Online Proceedings (CDROM) · 7: Program · 8: TOC · 9: Generate!

Step 1: Generate Tab

Check Copyright Signatures

Your first job is to check that your authors signed their copyright forms via START. To create the copyright-signatures file, go on the Generate tab, and click on the Copyright Signatures button.

At this point, click on the "Download copyright signatures" link to download the copyright signatures.

DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE; it is a legal record. Please quickly review it to make sure that appropriate signatures have been provided for all papers. For any papers with missing or inappropriate signatures (e.g., "Mickey Mouse"), contact the authors to get the proper copyright. The publications chairs need to extract hardcopy signatures from those papers' authors in time for their papers to be included.

Get Rough Cut

Now click on the Draft button. The command extracts the first two pages from each paper and adds margin markings and generates a first rough cut of the proceedings, book.pdf. Click Download Draft to download.

Check and Fix PDF files

Flip through the rough cut.
Are the authors correct?
Is their contact information easily findable?
Is there an error or issue in how figures and tables show up? Are things presented well for black-and-white? Do all the fonts in the papers display and print correctly?

If any of these things are amiss, you will need to ask the author to email you a corrected version of the PDF file.
We will deal with the margins in the next step.

Check and Fix Paper Information

Now you will check that the information provided by authors and inserted in the metadata file in the db are correct and correctly formatted.

• Count the papers to make sure you're not missing any (e.g., due to an author's failure to submit camera-ready copy).

• Capitalization of authors should be as in BibTeX. Example:

  Piet Q. van Oostrum, Jr.
    

• Check the author index at the end of the rough cut to make sure that you don't have separate entries for "Doe, Jane" and "Doe, J." That is, if the same author contributed to multiple papers, make sure their name is written the same way each time in the various paper information.

• Capitalization of titles should be exactly as in BibTeX, since these data will be used to create public BibTeX files for use by anyone. Specifically:

  • Always capitalize the first word of the title, and any word following a colon.
  • Except as above, lowercase the following "little words": articles, prepositions, coordinating conjunctions, and the infinitive marker "to."
  • Capitalize all content words. This includes hyphenated words: Mixed-Case.
  • If a content word is inherently capitalized and must retain capitalization even in a lowercase style (such as ACL's prescribed style acl.bst), "protect" it by surrounding at least the capital letters with curly braces: {E}nglish, {C}homsky, {IBM}, {CFG}s, {HMM}s (or if you prefer, {English}, {Chomsky}, {IBM}, {CFGs}, {HMMs}).
  • Use LaTeX math mode where appropriate: An $O(n^2)$ Algorithm for $n$-gram Smoothing.
  • Use LaTeX commands for accents.

Step 2: Margins Tab

Jump to Step 3

Going to this tab should display a table of the first 10 papers. To see all the papers, change the Page length value at the top of the table to the largest value possible.

The draft book created in the last step includes a margin frame and rulers that should make it easy to detect how much each paper must be shifted to fit.

Look especially at page 2 of each paper. If the text doesn't fit within the frame, look at the top of the text to see how many millimeters it should be moved, and add a margin specification.

You can change margins in this tab by clicking on the cell all the way to the right -- this will bring up the Margins adjustment, circled in red image right :arrow_right:.

The Margins Tab.

The format of the line is

x-axis-movement y-axis-movement[,more-options]

Positive values move up and to the right. Negative values move down and to the left. For example, if the top of the text is 14mm below the top of the frame, according to the ruler, then enter the values 0 14.

Common values are:

0 6
0 -12

Horizontal correction is rarely needed. In an exceptional case, you may need to shrink a page or clip it against a specified bounding box or something. You can do this by appending some options that will be passed to the LaTeX includegraphics command, which slurps in the page as a graphical object:

0 6,scale=0.95
0 10,bb=0 90 612 792,clip

After entering the margin movement information, you can regenerate the rough cut (just click on the Draft button in the Generate tab again and check that everything is at the right place. Iterate until convergence.

Alternatively, for each paper, go to the left column and click on the rightmost Edit Submission. This is circled in red image left :arrow_left:. This will bring you to the authors' final uploaded paper, where you can take a look at the paper, and adjust the margins in the submission page for each.

Step 3: Dwnl Templates Tab

Jump to Step 4

The Download/Upload Tab.

Download the ACLPUB .zip file, add in your sponsorship logos, rezip, and upload.

To download all the current files, click on the "Current ACLPub Templates", circled here in red. You will receive a zip file with all the files for your proceedings compilation. If you don't want to use START, and know what you're doing, here is where you would upload all your files.

Once downloaded and unzipped, you can edit all tex files here directly. You also add sponsorship logos here, via , and referencing the images added to the directory.

When you are done, zip the edited directory back up again, and upload it again by clicking the Choose File button ("ACLPUB templates zip name"), the "Import template".

You can also edit all .html files using the CDROM .zip

Step 4: Order Tab

Jump to Step 5

This tab creates the file called order.

The order file is used to format and order the papers in the proceedings, in the schedule, and also to generate the handbook. The latter can be a complex task, making sure that the schedule is formatted correctly and consistently, and pulling together times across workshops (like the student research workshop and the main proceedings). Since this is done in LaTeX, it's important that the schedules be formatted to be computer-readable.

You can either: 1. Use the Schedule Maker, to figure out your schedule, and get the order file created from that. 2. Use the text in the textbox as the order file, editing directly using the given markup.

If you use the ScheduleMaker tool, the order file is generated automatically and should be to spec. If you edit by the order file by hand, remember:

• Times should be specified in 24-hour format (implicit AM/PM):

   ! 12:00--13:30 Lunch

This is very important for things like the digital handbook!

• Time ranges should be fully specified, with two dashes in between (and no spaces). Don't put just the start time.

   17 9:00--9:30 # A really great paper

• Do not put time ranges in parentheses

• Can also make sure your file passes this verification script. E.g.,

   $ cat proceedings/order | python verify_order.py
   Found 0 errors

Order File

The order file below is adapted from SSST-7 at NAACL 2013. You can use it as a template. Remember to use a space, not a tab, to separate items on a line.

  * Thursday, June 13, 2013
  ! 9:15--9:30 Opening Remarks

  = Session 1
  8 9:30--10:00 # A Semantic Evaluation of Machine Translation Lexical Choice
  6 10:00--10:30 # Taste of Two Different Flavours: Which Manipuri Script works better for English-Manipuri Language pair SMT Systems?
  ! 10:30--11:00 Break

  = Session 2
  7 11:00--11:30 # Hierarchical Alignment Decomposition Labels for Hiero Grammar Rules
  3 11:30--12:00 # A Performance Study of Cube Pruning for Large-Scale Hierarchical Machine Translation
  4 12:00--12:30 # Combining Word Reordering Methods on different Linguistic Abstraction Levels for Statistical Machine Translation
  ! 12:30--14:00 Lunch

  = Session 3
  ! 14:00--15:00 Panel discussion: Meaning Representations for Machine Translation, with Jan Hajic, Kevin Knight, Martha Palmer and Dekai Wu
  9 15:00--15:30 # Combining Top-down and Bottom-up Search for Unsupervised Induction of Transduction Grammars
  ! 15:30--16:00 Break

  = Session 4
  2 16:00--16:30 # A Formal Characterization of Parsing Word Alignments by Synchronous Grammars with Empirical Evidence to the ITG Hypothesis.
  5 16:30--17:00 # Synchronous Linear Context-Free Rewriting Systems for Machine Translation       
   

Step 5: Templates Tab

Jump to Step 6

The Templates Tab.

This is where you edit most of the front matter and online information for the proceedings. To check how well each part compiles, press the buttons in the Preview Templates table.

point_right: :point_right: Remember to hit Save templates at the top when you edit the embedded files.

Select among the subtabs within this tab -- Sections, Settings, Headers, and CDROM -- to expose all the embedded files for editing.

Files to Edit in this Tab

  <dl>
  <dt>Book Proceedings</dt>
  <dd><b>Sections Subtab:</b>  `titlepage.tex`, `copyright.tex`, `preface.tex`,  `organizers.tex` </dd>
  <dd><b>Settings Subtab:</b> `citation-stamp.tex`, `spine.tex`, `book.tex`</dd>
  <dd><b>Headers Subtab:</b> `toc.tex.head`, `program.tex.head` </dd>
  <dt>Online Proceedings</dt>
  <dd><b>CDROM Subtab:</b> `index.html.head`, `authors.html.head`, `program.html.head`</dd>
  <dd>`unified-authors.html.head` (Publication Chairs Only), `mainindex.html.head` (Publication Chairs Only) </dd>
  </dl>

Files Generated using the Headers Files

  <dl>
    <dt>Book Proceedings</dt>
    <dd> `program.tex`, check out by pressing the `Program` button.</dd>
    <dd> `toc.tex`, check out by pressing the `Toc` button.</dd>
    <dt>Online Proceedings</dt>
    <dd>`index.html`, `authors.html`, `program.html` </dd>
    <dd> `unified-authors.html` (Publication Chairs Only), `mainindex.html` (Publication Chairs Only)</dd>
  </dl>

program.tex will follow what is given in the order file (Step 4). You edit/customize program.tex in the Program Tab (Step 7), and you can edit/customize toc.tex in the TOC Tab (Step 8). For editing/customizing the HTML, you'll need to do it offline.

Title Page (Sections Subtab)

titlepage.tex

Edit to reflect your title page.

Copyright Page (Sections Subtab)

copyright.tex

Fill out the ISBN here. This can be found in the Google spreadsheet. This is also where to use the tex call for sponsor logos, which we uploaded in Step Two.

Preface Page (Sections Subtab)

preface.tex

The general introductory, welcome message from the organizers goes here.

Organizers Page (Sections Subtab)

organizers.tex

This is where you list all the people who made this possible -- Organizers, Program Committee, Advisory Board, Panel, etc.

Citation Stamp (Settings Subtab)

citation-stamp.tex

This is the official citation for your proceedings, with gets stamped on the bottom of the first page of each author's work in your proceedings.

Spine (Settings Subtab)

spine.tex

This is for the spine on book proceedings if printed.

Book (Settings Subtab)

book.tex

This is the main file enveloping your proceedings.

Program (Headers Subtab)

program.tex.head

Edit your program header if desired.

TOC (Headers Subtab)

toc.tex.head

Edit your Table of Contents header if desired.

HTML Pages (CDROM Subtab)

index.html.head

authors.html.head

program.html.head

standard.css

These files are used to create the index.html, authors.html, and program.html files for the Online proceedings. Edit the headers here so that they point to your conference/website.

Step 6: CDROM Tab (Online Proceedings Tab)

Jump to Step 7

The CDROM Tab.

You will need to fill out this tab with the correct values for your volume, many of which can be found here. As an example, here are the values used for the main conference proceedings:

Abbreviation  ACL-HLT
Type             Main Conference
Title         The 2017 Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics
URL          http://acl2017.org
Book Title     Proceedings of the 2017 Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics
Month         July-August
Year          2017
Location      Vancouver, Canada
Publisher     Association for Computational Linguistics
Chair 1       Kevin Knight (USC Information Sciences Institute)
Chair 2       Ani Nenkova (University of Pennsylvania) 
Chair 3       Owen Rambow (Columbia University)
Chair 4       TOBEFILLED-Jill Burstein (Educational Testing Service)
Chair 5       TOBEFILLED-Jill Burstein (Educational Testing Service)
Chair 6       TOBEFILLED-Jill Burstein (Educational Testing Service)
Chair 7       TOBEFILLED-Jill Burstein (Educational Testing Service)
Chair 8       TOBEFILLED-Jill Burstein (Educational Testing Service)
Bibtex URL     http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/P17-1%03d

The correct value for Bibtex URL can be found here.

The Bibtex URL uses 8 characters to identify the conference/workshop and paper, after the http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/ prefix. You must make sure that the Bibtex URL provides for these 8 characters, but adding %03d (3 digits) or %02d (2 digits).

The first values after the hyphen identify the workshop or ACL event. The remaining values specify the paper ID.

For example, in an ACL main event in year 2017 (long papers, short papers, demos, student research workshop), the 8 characters will begin with P17-. This stands for "ACL, 2017". For a workshop in year 2017, the 8 characters will begin with W17-. This stands for "Workshop, 2017".

For workshops, we provide you with enough prefix that you need to specify just %02d additional following digits. For example, if you're the 5th workshop listed, your bibtex URL will look like this:

Bibtex URL      http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W17-05%02d

By specifying 2 more digits, we can create a paper for aclweb. E.g., the first workshop paper in the 5th workshop in 2016 is http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W16-0501.pdf.

For full ACL proceedings, specifying http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/P17-1%03d, we can create, e.g., http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/P17-1000.pdf (compare: http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/P16-1000.pdf).

Step 7: Program Tab

Jump to Step 8

(may be able to skip) The Program Tab.

Customize your book proceedings Program program.tex here. This is generated automatically in the Templates tab, when you click the Program button. See Step Five.

Step 8: Toc Tab

Jump to Step 9

(may be able to skip) The Table of Contents Tab.

Customize your toc.tex here. This is generated automatically in the Templates Tab, when you click the Toc Button. See Step Five.

Step 9: Generate! Tab :trophy: :trophy:

The Generate Tab.

Push these buttoms, top to bottom, in order. If one of them doesn't compile, check out the error log to see why and debug. Once you can compile All without errors, you are done! :balloon: :balloon:

Go back to Step:

1: Initial Generation · 2: Margins · 3: Dwnl Templates · 4: Order 5: Templates · 6: Online Proceedings (CDROM) · 7: Program · 8: TOC · 9: Generate!

Expert Route

1. Download the ACLPUB and CDROM zipfiles in the Dwnl Templates tab, download the compilation scripts here, edit the files and compile all the things perfectly, re-zip, and upload. See the Dwnl Templates section for more.

Here is a flowchart to illustrate the process. The ACLPUB scripts in this download use makefiles that roughly follow the steps in this flowchart.

File:Howto images/aclpub howto.png

2. After you've uploaded, generate All, under the Generate tab, without any errors. See the Step 9: Generate! Tab section for more.

---

Go back to Step:

1: Initial Generation · 2: Margins · 3: Dwnl Templates · 4: Order 5: Templates · 6: Online Proceedings (CDROM) · 7: Program · 8: TOC · 9: Generate!

What to Look Out For

Paper formatting

Please make sure that all of your papers meet the camera-ready standards as laid out <a href="camera-ready-faq.html">in this document</a>. In particular, there are four main areas of compliance you should look for:

1. Margins. Papers should fit entirely within the margins prescribed by the conference booklet. See Step 2: Margins above.
2. Black & White readability. Papers can contain color images, charts, and figures, but they should all be interpretable when printed or viewed in grayscale.
3. References. Please make sure there are no obvious problems with the formatting of the References section.
4. Metadata. Please make sure there are no obvious problems with the formatting of names in the metadata for each paper (which is viewable from the proceedings draft index). In particular, authors should be aware that their names will be formatted according to how they have entered it on their Softconf unified user info page.

Schedules

You will need to produce a schedule for your workshop/session while generating the proceedings. The schedule deadline is the same as the book deadline! Please follow the instructions in this document, or take a look at this sample order file from SSST-7. Schedules are built from the proceedings order file, which you can either edit manually in START's provided textbox or which you can create with the Excel-based Schedule Maker tool.

See the Order section above for more.

ISBN and Bibtex url

ISBNs are assigned based on the precise name of your workshop. Make sure to figure out the precise name, and send it to the pub chairs or upload it in the spreadsheet, in order to have the pub chairs give you your ISBN.

The ISBN is placed in the bottom of your copyright.tex file.

The Bibtex url should be put in place in Step 6: Online Proceedings Tab (CDROM), to aid generation of the online proceedings.

Logos

Sponsors for your workshop/conference should have their logos appear on the copyright.tex page. Jump to Step 3 to make sure those are uploaded and included.

Fonts and Unicode

The following warnings may appear when processing papers by authors from Japan:

Error: Unknown character collection 'Adobe-Japan1' Error: Couldn't find a font to substitute for 'Ryumin-Light-Identity-H' ('Adobe-Japan1' character collection) Error: Couldn't find a font to substitute for 'GothicBBB-Medium-Identity-H' ('Adobe-Japan1' character collection)

Also, the following warnings may appear when processing papers by authors from China:

Error: Unknown character collection 'Adobe-GB1' Error: Couldn't find 'GBK-EUC-H' CMap file for 'Adobe-GB1' collection Error: Unknown CMap 'GBK-EUC-H' for character collection 'Adobe-GB1' Error: Unknown font tag 'F1'

Make sure that fonts are embedded in the pdf. Make sure that the author started their LaTeX file with

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{times}

Authors

This git repository is currenty maintained by the 2017 ACL publications chairs advisor, Margaret Mitchell.

The material included in it has evolved over many years through the work of a large number of volunteers, including past NAACL publications chairs Margaret Mitchell, Adam Lopez, Matt Post, Colin Cherry, Nizar Habash, Claudia Leacock, Joakim Nivre, Matt Post, Noah Smith, William Schuler, and Richard Wicentowski.