2016Q3 Reports: General Chair

ACL-2016 At A Glance

ACL-2016 received 1,288 submissions, of which it accepted 231 long papers and 97 short papers for a combined acceptance rate of 25.5%. After adding 25 TACL papers, the program was set up to include 189 oral and 163 poster presentations.

Workshop proposals were handled jointly by ACL, NAACL, and EMNLP. Across the three conferences, there were 61 submissions. Based on the workshop organizers’ preferences and the quality of the submissions, ACL-2016 eventually selected 14 workshops, 12 of which are one-day workshops, and two are two-day. The ACL-2016 Workshop Chairs have also collaborated with the CoNLL-2016 and *SEM-2016 organizers to make both conferences co-located events of ACL-2016.

ACL-2016 received 32 tutorial proposals, of which it selected 8; 85 demo proposals, of which it selected 28; and 59 submissions for the Student Research Worskhop (14 thesis proposals, 45 research papers) of which it selected 4 thesis proposals and 18 research papers.

ACL-2016 will have two distinguished invited speakers: Mark Steedman (University of Edinburgh) and Amber Boydstun (University of California, Davis).

ACL-2016 again secured a strong sponsorship roster: Google, Baidu, Amazon (Platinum Sponsors); Bloomberg, Facebook, eBay, Elsevier, Microsoft Research, and Maluuba (Gold Sponsors); Huawei Technologies, Zalando SE (Silver Sponsors); Nuance, Grammarly, Voicebox, Yandex, and Textkernel (Bronze Sponsors).

The organizational team for ACL-2016 was outstanding: the chairs of each individual area have acted with high professionalism, attracting a large army of reviewers and area chairs who jointly did a fantastic job. Some innovations were introduced, but the conference also largely chose to follow best practices and innovations introduced in earlier years, such as the poster evenings of ACL-2014.

We would not have made it without the most helpful guidance of the ACL Executive Committee, in particular Priscilla Rasmussen, Christopher Manning, and Graeme Hirst. We are extremely grateful to them and everyone else who helped make ACL-2016 possible.

I mention a number of innovations and recommendations for future conference organizers. The reports of the individual chairs provide additional details: challenges, recommendations, and innovations.

Innovations

• The program now includes a Recruitment Lunch, funded by special sponsorships allowing also smaller companies to present themselves to potential job candidates.
• The short paper process preceded the long paper deadline, leading to a considerably larger number of long paper submissions and a slightly smaller number of short paper submissions than previous years.
• In addition to best paper awards, 11 "outstanding papers" were selected.
• Long papers are presented in 15-minute talks plus 5 minutes for questions; short papers are given 12 minutes plus 4 for questions.

Recommendations

• The Publicity chair, a person that should be selected early in the process, should liaise between the local, PC, publication chairs and other chairs to ensure that news is spread as widely and timely as possible, also via social media.
• The Conference Handbook requires a team that operates best as a separate team besides the Publication Chairs and Local Chairs - it may include one person from both teams (as this helps pulling information together) but should also include a responsible point person in a period where both other teams are in peak activity mode. The Conference Handbook team should use Matt Post’s wonderful conference handbook guidelines and scripts.
• A number of authors had problems obtaining visas in time to be able to come to ACL. To obtain a visa, authors need an invitation letter from the conference, which (in this year’s case) could be issued only after the authors registered for the conference. The time necessary to obtain visas should be factored into the planned timeline, such that registration will open early enough, and decisions announced early enough, for authors to obtain their visas and plan travel.