Call for Participation

Text Analysis Conference (TAC 2010)
http://www.nist.gov/tac/2010/

Track Evaluations: February - October 2010
Workshop: November 15-16, 2010


Conducted by:
U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)


INTRODUCTION

The Text Analysis Conference (TAC) is a series of evaluation workshops
organized to encourage research in Natural Language Processing and
related applications, by providing a large test collection, common
evaluation procedures, and a forum for organizations to share their
results. TAC comprises sets of tasks known as "tracks," each of which
focuses on a particular subproblem of NLP. TAC tracks focus on
end-user tasks, but also include component evaluations situated within
the context of end-user tasks.

You are invited to participate in TAC 2010. NIST will provide test
data for each track, and track participants will run their NLP systems
on the data and return their results to NIST for evaluation.
Organizations may choose to participate in any or all of the tracks.
The annual conference culminates in a November workshop at NIST in
Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA. All results submitted to NIST are
archived on the TAC web site, and all evaluations of submitted results
are included in the conference proceedings. Dissemination of TAC work
and results other than in the conference proceedings is welcomed, but
the conditions of participation specifically preclude any advertising
claims based on TAC results.


TRACKS

TAC 2010 has three tracks:

* Knowledge Base Population (KBP)
Track Coordinators: Heng Ji (hengji@cs.qc.cuny.edu)
Ralph Grishman (grishman@cs.nyu.edu)
Web page: http://nlp.cs.qc.cuny.edu/kbp/2010/
Mailing list: tac-kbp@nist.gov

* Recognizing Textual Entailment (RTE)
Track Coordinators: Luisa Bentivogli (bentivo@fbk.eu)
Danilo Giampiccolo (giampiccolo@celct.it)
Web page: http://www.nist.gov/tac/2010/RTE/
Mailing list: rte@nist.gov

* Summarization
Track Coordinators: Karolina Owczarzak (karolina.owczarzak@nist.gov)
Hoa Trang Dang (hoa.dang@nist.gov)
Web page: http://www.nist.gov/tac/2010/Summarization/
Mailing list: duc_list@nist.gov

The exact definition of the tasks to be performed in each TAC 2010
track is formulated and discussed on the track mailing list. To be
added to a track mailing list, follow the instructions given in the
track web page for subscribing to the mailing list. For questions
about the track, send email to the track coordinator (or post the
question to the track mailing list once you join).


TRACK REGISTRATION

Organizations wishing to participate in any of the TAC 2010 tracks are
invited to register online by May 21, 2010 at:

http://www.nist.gov/tac/2010/track-app.html

Track participants are advised to register as soon as possible in
order to receive timely access to track resources, including any
sample and training data. Participants should also make sure they are
subscribed to the mailing lists for the tracks for which they are
registered. Registration for a track does not commit you to
participating in the track, but is helpful to know for planning.

Any questions about conference participation may be sent to the TAC
project manager: tac-manager@nist.gov.


WORKSHOP

The TAC 2010 workshop will be held November 15-16, 2010, in
Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA. The TAC workshop is a forum both for
presentation of results (including failure analyses and system
comparisons), and for more lengthy system presentations describing
techniques used, experiments run on the data, and other issues of
interest to researchers in NLP. Track participants who wish to give a
presentation during the workshop will submit a 500-word abstract in
September describing the experiments they performed. As there is a
limited amount of time for oral presentations, the TAC advisory
committee will use the abstracts to determine which participants are
asked to speak and which will present in a poster session.


PRELIMINARY SCHEDULE

May 21: Deadline for track registration
July - September: Deadlines for results submission
September 26: Deadline for workshop presentation proposals
By early October: Release of individual evaluated results to participants
October 20: Deadline for participants' notebook papers
November 15-16: TAC 2010 workshop in Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA
February 2011: Deadline for participants' final proceedings papers