Dear
community!


We
are delighted to invite you for submission to the 5th Workshop on NLP

for
Positive Impact co-located at EMNLP 2026!


Workshop
website:
https://sites.google.com/view/nlp4positiveimpact

Call
for paper: https://sites.google.com/view/nlp4positiveimpact/call-for-papers-2026


Submission
methods:
OpenReview both direct
submissions and
ARR May Cycle commitment.

We
also accept non-archival
submissions.


Important
dates:


ARR
May Cycle Submission Due: May 25th, 2026

Direct
Submissions Due:
June 26th, 2026 via https://openreview.net/group?id=EMNLP/2026/Workshop/NLP4PI

ARR
Reviewed Submissions Commitment Due: July 26th, 2026 (tentative)

Notification
of Acceptance (both channels): August 15th, 2026

Camera-Ready
Papers Due: September 10th, 2026

Workshop
Date: October 24th-29th 2026 (co-located with EMNLP 2026)

All
deadlines are 11:59 PM (Anywhere on Earth)


Workshop
Summary


The
increasing adoption of language-oriented AI systems offers unprecedented opportunities for positive societal impact. NLP technologies have matured to the point where they can meaningfully contribute to addressing global challenges like poverty, hunger, healthcare,
education, inequality, COVID-19, and climate change, aligning with the UN sustainability goals.

This
workshop aims to advance innovative NLP research that benefits society, emphasizing responsible methods and impactful applications. We welcome submissions in areas including, but not limited to:



Grounding
NLP in Real-World Impact: Beyond improving model performance, how can NLP systems be directly tied to social outcomes? This could include case studies of real-world deployments or strategies for better deployment and maintenance practices.



Underexplored
Applications: While NLP for healthcare and mental well-being is well-established, we encourage research tackling overlooked areas such as poverty, hunger, energy, and climate change.



Interdisciplinary
Collaborations: We highly value work that integrates insights from other fields, such as social science, political science, economics, philanthropy, and HCI, and we encourage submissions of case studies or examples that highlight such collaborations.

Special
Theme: Measuring the Societal Impact of AI and NLP

This
year we would like to find an answer to the question: How
can we measure the social impact of AI and NLP?
With even the bigger raise of opportunities of AI and language technologies, we would like to understand how it influences society and if in positive manners. Position, philosophical-grounded, and new evaluation framework suggestion papers are very much welcomed
to enhance the discussion!


Submission
Types

We
encourage diverse contributions, including:



Identifying
social needs and affected demographics.



Proposing
new tasks or directions through position papers.



Conducting
literature reviews or philosophical discussions on NLP’s societal impact.



Designing
user studies, surveys, or ethical frameworks.



Exploring
interdisciplinary methods and collaboration strategies.

Submissions
must address the ethical and societal implications of the work, with a clear focus on defining and achieving positive impact. We look forward to fostering discussions that inspire actionable, responsible advancements in NLP for the greater good.


Papers
Format


Both
long and short paper submissions should follow all of the ARR

submission
requirements

https://aclrollingreview.org/cfp#paper-submission-information,
including:
Long
Papers
(8
pages) and Short Papers (4 pages).



Organizers

Katherine
Atwell (Northeastern University)

Angana
Borah (University of Michigan)

Dr.
Daryna Dementieva (Technical University of Munich)

Prof
Elisa Kreiss (University of California)

Dr.
Neema Kotonya (Dataminr)

Jiarui
Liu
(Carnegie Mellon University)

Liz
Olson (Dataminr)

Ruyuan
Wan (Pennsylvania State University)

Prof
Jieyu Zhao (University of Southern California)

Steering
Committee

Prof
Rada Mihalcea (University of Michigan)

Dr.
Joel Tetreault (Dataminr)

Dr.
Zhijing Jin (University of Toronto)

Contact
Email:
nlp4pi.workshop@gmail.com


All
positive regards,

Daryna
Dementieva

On
behalf of NLP4PI Workshop Organizers