2020Q1 Minutes (public version)

publicity: feedback and discussion of ideas for research dissemination via our new ACL website

(Barbara, Sarvnaz)

Next steps:

Start publicity on new ACL website: posts and invited posts; highlights (e.g., CL surveys) and pointers to existing community efforts (e.g., newsletters)
Kick off new NLP group information collection effort (ACL wiki is outdated), consult with Equity Director (Who are we? / Where are we?)
Workshop on scientific communication and public outreach in 2021 (suggestions of invited speakers welcome, incl. company outreach people)

ACL2022

(Rada)

We have three candidates expressing intentions to bid for ACL 2022, and are now waiting for their draft proposals by Mid March. Will contact some other people to see if they would be interested in submitting a bid.

environmental sustainability

(Tim)

Will put together a report for the ACL 2020 exec meeting in Seattle.

sponsorship committee

(Priscilla)

Will start to find the sponsorship director.

plans for EACL2021

(Sharon)

Priscilla to send comments on EACL 2021 budget [done] and venue contracts [in progress].

David will need to sign the contracts when they are agreed.

Sharon to tell EACL 2021 GC to appoint D&I chair. First point of contact for this person is new ACL D&E chair (Natalie). [done]

Barbara di Eugenio and ACL 2020 chairs to ensure that D&I chair role is included in updates to conference handbook.

Priscilla to investigate longer-term PCO contracts and report back at summer Exec meeting.

reviewing committee update

(Hinrich)

Next step: Form a unified proposal based on the three proposals within this month, and the final version will be presented to the memberships at the ACL2020 conference in Seattle.

TACL update

(Ani)

Currently TACL handles fewer that 200 paper a year and the median time to first decision is 50 days. Our goal is to scale the reviewing process so that we can handle many more submissions, with shorter time to make a decision. To achieve this, we are planning (1) an expansion of the action editor and reviewers rosters, and (2) hope to get a better environment for handling submissions.

1. We have established more explicit criteria for eligibility for the action editor and reviewer roles. This approach has allowed us to identify many qualified potential reviews from geographic areas not well-represented before, as well as in research areas that are not among the most popular. This expansion is ongoing and we will report the results at the next meeting in July.

2. The current system hosting TACL has only rudimentary functionality---final versions of papers are sent by email, reviewer discussion is done in email and not archived, the burden of identifying conflict of interest is on the editors and action editors, there is no easy search function for matching a paper with potential reviewers and action editors, which may become problematic after we expand the rosters for these roles. We will prepare a document with system functionality that we believe will speed up the reviewing process and will discuss options of how to get these implemented.

The only decision related to CL was that research papers from the journal will be eligible for conference presentation, even though the review processes will remain single-blind. This means that we at TACL will consider a review process that strictly enforces double-blind reviewing and will decline to handle papers for which it is hard to find reviewers who do not know the identity of the authors. The above two activities are a priority, so changes related to enforcement of double-blind reviewing may be delayed to next year.

CL paper presentations at conferences

(Hwee Tou)

Submissions to Computational Linguistics (CL) will continue to be reviewed single-blind. Authors of accepted CL research papers (including special issue research papers, but excluding survey papers, squibs, and book reviews) will be given the option to present at *ACL/EMNLP conferences. CL research papers accepted for publication starting from the March 2020 issue of CL will be eligible for conference presentation, beginning at the ACL 2020 conference in Seattle, WA, USA.

The above has been approved by the ACL Exec.

ACL2020 update

(Dan)

Will discuss at the site visit: possible downsizing or even canceling the conference due to COVID-19 risk.
Will get D&I budget approved by the Exec so that the D&I Committee can start working in parallel.

Equity Director

(Natalie)

Will work on the plan, and present at the summer Exec meeting.

Updates from the PCC

(Emily, Graeme)

(confidential)