ACL Resolutions

ACL Resolutions

This is a partial list of ACL resolutions. Older resolutions will be added over time.

Mar 18, 2012

We accept the LTA Nominating Committee's recommendation to give the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award to [name withheld].

The ACL executive committee approves the request from the editors of ACL TACL that reviewing of paper submissions to TACL should be double blind. More specifically, reviewers will not know the identities of the authors. Action editors and the journal editors will have access to the author identities.

Dec 23, 2011

(PASSED) The ACL exec approves the creation of Sections as internal structures of SIGLEX, each having an elected representative as an additional officer, with the corresponding change of their constitution. The first Section will be on Multiword Expressions. New Sections can be introduced when necessary.

Nov 23, 2011

(PASSED) The ACL exec approves the creation of the SIGSLP special interest group on speech and language processing for assistive technologies.

Aug 2, 2011

(PASSED)Motion regarding Ongoing Maintenance of the ACL Portal Website

Background: Currently we do not have any programming support allocated to the Portal. We either have to abandon the Portal by default (eventually it will need some maintenance) or develop it further, if only minimally.

Proposal:

1. We email the membership to see if we can find someone who has a student who knows Drupal (the content management system used by the website) and is able to work on a casual basis paid for between 4 and 8 hours per week. An appropriate rate of payment would be $30 per hour. The total cost of this would be between $6000 and $12000 per year.

2. We establish an ad hoc 'information services committee' consisting of three people who take responsibility for determining and directing the activities of the portal maintainer.

Jun 28, 2011

(PASSED) A summer school on NLP & IR is being held in cooperation with SIGIR just before SIGIR-2011 (see reference to http://nlp.blcu.edu.cn/others/nlpir-ss/ in http://www.sigir.org/events/events-upcoming.html).

We hereby approve 1 and 2.

(1) The summer school will be held in cooperation with the ACL

(2) The ACL will sponsor the summer school for $1000

Jun 3, 2011

(PASSED) The ACL executive committee appoints Haifeng Wang as its liaison to AFNLP for the remainder of his term on the ACL executive committee.

Dec 17, 2010

(PASSED) New eligibility criteria for reduced membership fees to start in 2011:

Regular rates: U.S., Canada, E.U. (except Romania and Bulgaria), Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, European microstates, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, U.A.E.

Reduced rates: All other countries.

Dec 15, 2010

(PASSED)

1 Background

Historically our journal production costs have consisted of two elements: the part-time editorial assistance hired by the editor, and the production work executed and managed by MIT Press. The part-time editorial assistance costs around A$15k per annum; this pays for one day a week of Suzy Howlett, our editorial assistant. The MIT Press costs, which cover copyediting, proofreading, typesetting, web hosting plus ancillary things like marketing and the handling of rights permissions have typically been on the order of US$45-50k per annum.

2 The New Model

We have worked out a new cost structure for the MIT Press production costs. There are a number of details here, but the major substantive elements are that (a) we are reducing some of the production costs by using a LaTeX-aware copy editor; and (b) MIT Press has agreed to substantially reduce its management overhead. Consequently, the new target per annum MIT Press cost is about US$28k, representing a saving of at least US$17k per annum. This figure assumes the journal stays the size that it currently is (640 pages per annum), so the number will go up if we publish more; but the per-page production costs are now vastly improved (note that the total costs include a relatively fixed-cost management element and a variable production cost based on # of pages).

3 The Proposed Package

My proposal consists of two elements.

[1] We sign up to the new MITP model for a five year period; and [2] we invest some of the savings -- I would suggest somewhere around US$5k per annum for the period-- in further developing our instance of the Open Journal System web-based manuscript management machinery.

The aim of this second element is to further streamline our processes with two aims in mind: (a) to enable us to handle larger volumes (and in particular to cater for some possible outcomes of the ongoing conference-->journal discussions), and (b) to build infrastructure that will make it easier for us to at some point go completely independent of third party publishers, should we choose to do that.

4 Risks and Benefits

I considered trying to replace MITP with our own resources; my estimate is that this would require us, amongst other things, to hire a one-day-per-week production manager. MIT Press has got very close to matching the costs of that by reducing their management overhead. For us this is less risky, since it's quite hard for us to find people to do this kind of work, but under the proposal model, that's MIT Press's problem. Similarly, I explored hiring our own LaTeX-aware copy editors; I found an excellent candidate (who it now looks like MIT Press will use for CL) and had him to do some test editing; he's very good. But accessing this resource through MIT Press again has the benefit that if he goes sick or otherwise becomes unavailable, it's MIT Press's job to find a replacement.

Nov 5, 2010

1. (PASSED) The ACL executive committee approves a new procedure for the sponsorship committee as set forth in the following document.

Word Doc PDF

Apr 14, 2010

1. (PASSED) Following the election of a Vice President Elect for 2010 from outside the Asia-Pacific region, which was the target region for last year's nominations by the nominating committee, the ACL Exec guides the nominating committee to nominate again candidates from that region. As implied by the ACL constitution, nominations from the floor will not be limited to any region.

Mar 22, 2010

1. (PASSED) The ACL executive committee allocates $3600 to Min Yen Kan for work on curating the ACL Anthology.

Mar 11, 2010

1. (PASSED) The ACL Exec would like to explore in depth the initiative for establishing a journal venue for conference publications, following the guidelines and open issues discussed at its teleconfernce on February 22, 2010. To that end, a committee is formed which will prepare a detailed proposal that can be brought up for vote by the exec. The target deadline for the committee to present the detailed proposal and recommendations to the Exec is April 15, 2010. The committee will consist of the following members:
   

   Ido Dagan and Hwee Tou - co-chairs
   Robert Dale - as CL editor
   Graeme Hirst - as Treasurer
   Dragomir Radev - as Secreatary
   Paola Merlo and Ken Church

Jan 27, 2010

1. (PASSED) That Ben Phelan be paid the sum of A$15000 for the development of the ACL Member Portal, with this payment being made in two stages; one payment of AUD10000 by end January 2010, and the remaining A$5000 paid on June 30, 2010, this being the end of the six month period during which any bugs and problems identified in the portal are to be attended to.

November 13, 2009

1. (PASSED) ACL Endorsement of Scientific Meetings
   
   The ACL is pleased to endorse scientific meetings organized by other bodies, so long as the following criteria are met:
   
   1. It is an open scientific conference related to computational linguistics
   2. Acceptance of submissions is based on genuine peer review
   3. The conference appears to be competently organized
   4. ACL membership materials are distributed at the conference
   5. Understanding that there is no implication that ACL will host proceedings in the ACL Anthology

In order to receive ACL endorsement, please contact the ACL Secretary at secretary@aclweb.org. Please indicate how the conference meets the ACL's criteria.

October 21, 2009

1. (PASSED) The ACL exec extends the contract for the Computational Linguistics journal with MIT press by one more year, to include the 2010 calendar year.

July 7, 2009

1. (PASSED) The ACL exec approves the creation of the SIGFSM special interest group on finite-state methods.
   Ido Dagan

March 11, 2009

1. (PASSED) The ACL exec approved the creation of the SIGMT special interest group on machine translation.
   Ido Dagan

September 3, 2008

1. (PASSED) A Proposal for an ACL Member Portal
   Robert Dale 6th August 2008
   
   This document proposes that we put in place an ACL Member Portal on the web by 1st January 2009.

August 2008

1. (PASSED) The ACL exec approved the creation of the SIGBIOMED special interest group on biomedical NLP.
   Steven Bird

June 10, 2008

1. (PASSED) Shadow Account Practices
   Eduard Hovy, Donia Scott, Kathy McCoy, Mike Rosner, Diane Litman (reconstructed by Kathy McCoy 2/3/04)

   Goal

   To set up limited financial independence for ACL's daughter organizations (ACL chapters and SIGs).

   1. Basic Structure: Shadow Accounts

   1.1 All funds brought in by any ACL activity (conference, chapter conference, workshop, SIG workshop, grant, donation, membership, journal fees, etc.) ultimately belong to the ACL, unless explicitly specified to the contrary.

   1.2 To give chapters and SIGs a certain amount of operational flexibility, and to facilitate affiliation of the ACL with other organizations, so-called Shadow Accounts will be set up. These accounts will record the amount of funds `belonging' to the daughter organizations.

   1.3 The funds in a shadow account might be held either in a bank account separate from the principal ACL account, or they might simply be an amount earmarked as `belonging' to the daughter organization, or a mixture of the two. That is, the shadow account is a (possibly) virtual sub-account of the accounts of the international ACL.

   1.4 A shadow account must be dissolved and its funds returned to the ACL either upon request of the ACL Executive, or when the daughter organization is dissolved.

   2. Signature Authority and Usage

   2.1 The shadow accounts will be managed by the ACL Treasurer, unless he or she allocates (partial or full) management to the daughter organization.

   2.2 If management of a shadow account is allocated to the daughter organization, both the ACL Treasurer and the Treasurer of the organization will have signature authority over the shadow account.

   2.3 Funds in shadow accounts can be spent by the daughter organizations without requiring formal approval from the central ACL Executive or its Treasurer, as long as this usage is consistent with the policies of the ACL. Usage of the funds in unusual ways requires approval from the ACL Executive.

   2.4 To ensure consistency with ACL policies, the ACL Secretary will maintain a list of approved purposes for which shadow account funds can be used.

   3. Satellite Shadow Accounts

   3.1 All funds brought into a shadow account under conditions that explicitly forbid the funds to belong to the International ACL as a whole (for example, grants made by national institutions for local usage), will reside in satellite shadow accounts.

   3.2 Such satellite shadow accounts will also include any monies brought in for activities that are independent of the International ACL (e.g., a grant to set up a website of training in CL within the chapter area) or monies tied to other specific projects (e.g., a grant specifically for students within the chapter area to attend ACL conferences).

   3.3 Satellite accounts will be managed by the Treasurer of the daughter organization.

   4. Reporting

   3.1 Every year at the annual business meeting of the ACL (and also at the ACL Executive meeting that precedes it during the ACL conference), the daughter organization must provide full accounting of its financial activities during the past year, including the activity of satellite shadow accounts.

   4.2 The daughter organization must provide full accounting of its financial activities to its own members at least once a year.

   5. Maintaining a Minimum

   5.1 At the beginning of every financial year, the ACL Treasurer will ensure that each shadow account contains a specified minimum, by transferring from the ACL central account the requisite amount. This minimum will not take into account the contents of satellite shadow accounts.

   5.2 At the time of writing, the minimum for chapters is US$5000 and for SIGs is US$0.

   6. Income and Loss

   6.1 Unless explicitly designated otherwise by the giver, income derived from the activities of a daughter organization will be added to its shadow account. In the case of joint ACL-chapter conferences, the income will be split. A portion of the income will go to the shadow account and the remainder will belong to the ACL and be held in its central account.

   6.2 At present, the above mentioned split will be 50-50 for chapters.

   6.3 In a similar way, unless explicitly designated otherwise, any loss resulting from the activities of a daughter organization will be borne against the shadow account if the daughter. In the case of a joint ACL-chapter conference, any will be borne according to the same split proportion as the income. Any loss beyond the amount in a shadow account will be taken over by the central ACL. In such a situation, the central ACL will continue to ensure that the involved shadow account contains the agreed-upon minimum at the beginning of each financial year. However, it is expected that the portion of loss incurred by ACL will be paid back to ACL by the chapter, on the basis of the surplus from subsequent chapter activities.

   6.4 Should the ACL Exec deem that the shadow account is consistently in a loss situation (e.g., because of the chapter acting in a fiscally irresponsible manner), the ACL may decide to resume control of the shadow account, at its discretion.

   7. Definitions

   1. "ACL" -- International Association for Computational Linguistics
   2. "Chapter" -- a regional chapter of the ACL (EACL, NAACL)
   3. "SIG" -- Special Interest Group of the ACL, formally accepted
   4. "daughter organization" -- ACL chapter or SIG
   5. "Central account" -- bank accounts, etc., held by ACL
   6. "Shadow account" -- real or virtual bank accounts managed by daughter
   7. "Satellite shadow account" -- bank accounts, etc., held by daughter for funds explicitly earmarked by provider for daughter usage only

May 31, 2008

1. (PASSED) The AFNLP representative to ACL will be invited to all ACL exec meetings but not included in the ACL exec mailing list.
2. (PASSED) Prof. Kam-Fai Wong's position as AFNLP representative to ACL is hereby approved, starting immediately and for the duration of his membership on the AFNLP board.

April 14, 2008

1. (PASSED) Copyright Transfer Agreement

Copyright to the above work (including, without limitation, the right to publish the work in whole or in part in any and all forms and media, now or hereafter known) is hereby transferred to the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), effective as of the date of this agreement, on the understanding that the work has been accepted for presentation at a meeting sponsored by the ACL and for publication in the proceedings of that meeting. However, each of the authors and the employers for whom the work was performed reserve all other rights, specifically including the following: (1) All proprietary rights other than copyright and publication rights transferred to ACL; (2) The right to publish in a journal or collection or to be used in future works of the author's own (such as articles or books) all or part of this work, provided that acknowledgment is given to the ACL and a full citation to its publication in the particular proceedings is included; (3) The right to make oral presentation of the material in any forum; (4) The right to make copies of the work for internal distribution within the author's organization and for external distribution as a preprint, reprint, technical report, or related class of document.

Exceptions: Some of the foregoing conditions will not apply if the work is not copyrighted or has a non-transferrable copyright, because it has been produced by government employees acting within the scope of their employment. In this case, exceptions can be made by ticking the appropriate box below:

[ ] The work has been produced by government employees acting within the scope of their employment and is not copyrighted

[ ] The work has been produced by government employees acting within the scope of their employment and has non-transferrable copyright

[ ] The work has been produced by government employees acting within the scope of their employment and the government reserves the right to reproduce the work for government purposes

By typing my signature below, I confirm that all authors of the work have agreed to the above and that I am authorized to sign this form on their behalf.

Signature (type your name):

Your job title (if not one of the authors):

Name and address of your organization:

April 9, 2008

1. (PASSED) The ACL exec appoints Mark Steedman as representative to AFNLP for the rest of his term on the exec.

September 14, 2007

1. (PASSED) The initial SIG organizer(s) may serve as the de facto officers for the first year, while a nomination/election process is being established; official elections must be held within the first year after approval of the SIG.

June 24, 2007

1. (PASSED) The ACL exec approves the creation of a new SIG, SIGANN for Annotation. The officers of SIGANN are Nancy Ide and Adam Meyers.

June 18, 2007

1. (PASSED) In order to clearly separate discussion from voting, the voting on ACL resolutions will be done via sending the vote via email to the ACL secretary. When the vote is over, the secretary will send a summary of the vote (including the names and votes) back to the executive committee and also record the status of the vote (minus the names) on the resolutions page.

In special circumstances, the exec can decide *in advance of the vote* to change this procedure for valid reasons.

June 8, 2007

1. (PASSED) To accept Singapore's bid for the 2009 ACL/IJCNLP conference.
2. (PASSED) The surpluses or deficits (as the case may be) will be shared 50-50 between ACL and AFNLP. AFNLP chooses to share its share 50-50 with the local organizers.

May 16, 2007

Three related proposals about ACL's 2008 conference:

1. (PASSED) PROPOSAL 1 : long and short tracks. The 2008 conference maintains the NAACL HLT distinction between long and short papers, where short papers have a serious submission number, a serious reviewing, a Coling-level acceptance rate (about 40%), and a different profile (new ideas, smaller results, smaller experiments) with different submission and reviewing requirements (completed work not required) and a much later submission deadline.
2. (PASSED) PROPOSAL 2 : the structure of the PC. There are 4 PC co-chairs: 1 NLP for long papers, 1 NLP for short papers, 1 Speech (for both long and short), 1 IR (for both long and short). The senior PC will be different for long and short papers (though potentially with overlap). The short paper PC will also handle demos. The Speech and IR co-chairs should have at least some visibility in the general NLP field.
3. (PASSED) PROPOSAL 3 : name. The conference has a name that (a) includes "HLT" in its short name and (b) "Human Language Technologies" in its long name. For specificity, this proposal is: "ACL-08:HLT" and "The 46th Annual meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies".

May 2007

Free registration for some conference officials

1. (PASSED) The General Chair, all PC co-chairs, and all local chairs (up to three) get free registration (not including the banquet) to ACL conferences. The free registration does not include ACL membership (it is assumed that people in these positions would already be ACL members).

July 2006

Internet access at conferences

1. (PASSED) Some recent conferences have not provided quality internet access. It was either too slow or limited. It was proposed that future conferences should provide easy access to fast internet (either as part of registration or for a separate fee). It is important that internet access is not restricted to a small number of ports (e.g., port 80) but rather to allow all ports normally used by mainstream internet protocols, including ssh, vpn, and remote desktop access.