Connectionists: Call for Labs Proposals @ CLEF 2024 - Deadline Extended
Alba García
albagarciaseco at gmail.com
Tue Jul 4 08:23:54 EDT 2023
[Apologies for cross-postings]
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The deadline for the submissions of labs proposals has been extended to *14*
*th **July*. You can find all the information about the call at:
https://clef2024.imag.fr/index.php?page=Pages/call_for_lab_proposals.html
Call for CLEF 2024 Labs Proposals - Deadline extended
At its 25th edition, the Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum (CLEF)
is a continuation of the very successful series of evaluation campaigns of
the Cross Language Evaluation Forum (CLEF) which ran between 2000 and 2009,
and established a framework of systematic evaluation of information access
systems, primarily through experimentation on shared tasks. As a leading
annual international conference, CLEF uniquely combines evaluation
laboratories and workshops with research presentations, panels, posters and
demo sessions. In 2024, CLEF takes place in September, 9-12 at the
University of Grenoble Alpes, France.
Researchers and practitioners from all areas of information access and
related communities are invited to submit proposals for running evaluation
labs as part of CLEF 2024. Proposals will be reviewed by a lab selection
committee, composed of researchers with extensive experience in evaluating
information retrieval and extraction systems. Organisers of selected
proposals will be invited to include their lab in the CLEF 2024 labs
programme, possibly subject to suggested modifications to their proposal to
better suit the CLEF lab workflow or timeline.
Background
The CLEF Initiative (http://www.clef-initiative.eu/) is a self-organised
body whose main mission is to promote research, innovation, and development
of information access systems with an emphasis on multilingual information
in different modalities - including text and multimedia - with various
levels of structure. CLEF promotes research and development by providing an
infrastructure for:
1.
independent evaluation of information access systems;
2.
investigation of the use of unstructured, semi-structured,
highly-structured, and semantically enriched data in information access;
3.
creation of reusable test collections for benchmarking;
4.
exploration of new evaluation methodologies and innovative ways of using
experimental data;
5.
discussion of results, comparison of approaches, exchange of ideas, and
transfer of knowledge.
Scope of CLEF Labs
We invite submission of proposals for two types of labs:
1.
“Campaign-style” Evaluation Labs for specific information access
problems (during the twelve months period preceding the conference),
similar in nature to the traditional CLEF campaign “tracks”. Topics covered
by campaign-style labs can be inspired by any information access-related
domain or task.
2.
Labs that follow a more classical “workshop” pattern, exploring
evaluation methodology, metrics, processes, etc. in information access and
closely related fields, such as natural language processing, machine
translation, and human-computer interaction.
We highly recommend organisers new to the CLEF format of shared task
evaluation campaigns to first consider organising a lab workshop to discuss
the format of their proposed task, the problem space and practicalities of
the shared task. The CLEF 2024 programme will reserve about half of the
conference schedule for lab sessions. During the conference, the lab
organisers will present their overall results in overview presentations
during the plenary scientific paper sessions to give non-participants
insights into where the research frontiers are moving. During the
conference, lab organisers are expected to organise separate sessions for
their lab with ample time for general discussion and engagement with all
participants - not just those presenting campaign results and papers.
Organisers should plan time in their sessions for activities such as
panels, demos, poster sessions, etc. as appropriate. CLEF is always
interested in receiving and facilitating innovative lab proposals.
Potential task proposers unsure of the suitability of their task proposal
or its format for inclusion at CLEF are encouraged to contact the CLEF 2024
Lab Organizing Committee Chairs to discuss its suitability or design at an
early stage.
Proposal Submission
Lab proposals must provide sufficient information to judge the relevance,
timeliness, scientific quality, benefits for the research community, and
the competence of the proposers to coordinate the lab. Each lab proposal
should identify one or more organisers as responsible for ensuring the
timely execution of the lab. Proposals should be 3 to 4 pages long and
should provide the following information:
1.
Title of the proposed lab.
2.
A brief description of the lab topic and goals, its relevance to CLEF
and the significance for the field.
3.
A brief and clear statement on usage scenarios and domain to which the
activity is intended to contribute, including the evaluation setup and
metrics.
4.
Details on the lab organiser(s), including identifying the task chair(s)
responsible for ensuring the running of the task. This should include
details of any previous involvement in organising or participating in
evaluation tasks at CLEF or similar campaigns.
5.
The planned format of the lab, i.e., campaign-style (“track”) or
workshop.
6.
Is the lab a continuation of an activity from previous year(s) or a new
activity?
1.
For activities continued from previous year(s): Statistics from previous
years (number of participants/runs for each task), a clear statement on why
another edition is needed, an explicit listing of the changes proposed, and
a discussion of lessons to be learned or insights to be made.
2.
For new activities: A statement on why a new evaluation campaign is
needed and how the community would benefit from the activity.
1.
Details of the expected target audience, i.e., who do you expect to
participate in the task(s), and how do you propose to reach them.
2.
Brief details of tasks to be carried out in the lab. The proposal should
clearly motivate the need for each of the proposed tasks and provide
evidence of its capability of attracting enough participation. The dataset
which will be adopted by the Lab needs to be described and motivated in the
perspective of the goals of the Labs; also indications on how the dataset
will be shared are useful. It is fine for a lab to have a single task, but
labs often contain multiple closely related tasks, needing a strong
motivation for more than 3 tasks, to avoid useless fragmentation.
3.
Expected length of the lab session at the conference: half-day, one day,
two days. This should include high-level details of planned structure of
the session, e.g. participant presentations, invited speaker(s), panels,
etc., to justify the requested session length.
4.
Arrangements for the organisation of the lab campaign: who will be
responsible for activities within the task; how will data be acquired or
created, what tools or methods will be used, e.g., how will necessary
queries be created or relevance assessment carried out; any other
information which is relevant to the conduct of your lab.
5.
If the lab proposes to set up a steering committee to oversee and advise
its activities, include names, addresses, and homepage links of people you
propose to be involved.
Lab proposals must be submitted at the following address:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=clef2024
choosing the “CLEF 2024 Lab Proposals” track.
Reviewing Process
Each submitted proposal will be reviewed by the CLEF 2024 Lab Organizing
Committee. The acceptance decision will be sent by email to the responsible
organiser by 28 July 2023. The final length of the lab session at the
conference will be determined based on the overall organisation of the
conference and the number of participant submissions received by a lab.
Advertising Labs at CLEF 2023 and ECIR 2024
Organisers of accepted labs are expected to advertise their labs at both
CLEF 2023 (18-21 September 2023, Thessaloniki, Greece) and ECIR 2024 (24-28
March 2024, Glasgow, Scotland). So, at least one lab representative should
attend these events.
Advertising at CLEF 2023 will consist of displaying a poster describing the
new lab, running a break-out session to discuss the lab with prospective
participants, and advertising/announcing it during the closing session.
Advertising at ECIR 2024 will consist of submitting a lab description to be
included in ECIR 2024 proceedings (11 October 2023) and advertising the lab
in a booster session during ECIR 2024.
Mentorship Program for Lab Proposals from newcomers
CLEF 2019 introduced a mentorship program to support the preparation of lab
proposals for newcomers to CLEF. The program will be continued at CLEF 2024
and we encourage newcomers to refer to Friedberg et al. (2015) for initial
guidance on preparing their proposal:
Friedberg I, Wass MN, Mooney SD, Radivojac P. Ten simple rules for a
community computational challenge. PLoS Comput Biol. 2015 Apr
23;11(4):e1004150.
The CLEF newcomers mentoring program offers help, guidance, and feedback on
the writing of your draft lab proposal by assigning a mentor to you, who
help you in preparing and maturing the lab proposal for submission. If your
lab proposal falls into the scope of an already existing CLEF lab, the
mentor will help you to get in touch with those lab organisers and team up
forces.
Lab proposals for mentorship must be submitted at the following address:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=clef2024
choosing the “CLEF 2024 Lab Mentorship” track.
Important Dates
-
29 May 2023: Requests for mentorship submission (only newcomers)
-
29 May 2023 - 16 June 2023: Mentorship period
-
7 July 2023 14 July 2023 (extended): Lab proposals submission (newcomers
and veterans)
-
28 July 2023: Notification of lab acceptance
-
18-21 Sep 2023: Advertising Accepted Labs at CLEF 2023, Thessaloniki,
Greece
-
11 October 2023: Submission of short lab description for ECIR 2024
-
13 November 2023: Lab registration opens
-
24-28 March 2024: Advertising labs at ECIR 2024, Glasgow, UK
CLEF 2024 Lab Chairs
-
Petra Galuscakova, University of Stavanger, Norway
-
Alba García Seco de Herrera, University of Essex, UK
CLEF 2024 Lab Mentorship Chair
-
Liana Ermakova, Université de Bretagne Occidentale, France
-
Florina Piroi, TU Wien, Austria
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