February 2026 - Corpora

CfP: RiCL Journal special issue - Learner Corpus Research meets the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and the Companion Volume
by María Belén Díez Bedmar 28 Feb '26

28 Feb '26

*CFPs special issue of Research in Corpus Linguistics (RiCL)* *‘Learner Corpus Research meets the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and the Companion Volume’* Due to the importance of the *Common European Framework of Reference for Languages* (CEFR) and the *Companion Volume* (CV) (Council of Europe, 2001, 2020) for the learning, teaching and assessment of languages, most learner corpora nowadays employ the learner’s CEFR level to specify the student’s communicative language competence level or proficiency level. Most learner corpora compiled in CEFR-aligned high-stakes foreign language accreditation/certification exams - for instance, the *Cambridge Learner Corpus* (O’Keeffe & Mark, 2017), the *FineDesc Learner Corpus *(Díez-Bedmar, 2025) - are composed of learners of English production in successful certification/accreditation exams at different CEFR levels. Other target languages are compiled in similar foreign language accreditation/certification exam conditions, such as the CELI corpus for Italian (Spina et al., 2023) or the Merlin corpus for Italian, German and Czech (Wisniewski, 2020). Other learner corpora composed of accreditation/certification exams that are not aligned to the CEFR or learner corpora compiled in other contexts have also been partially or fully aligned to the CEFR levels, as reported by Gablasova et al., (2019) regarding the *Trinity Lancaster* *Corpus*, Thewissen (2013) concerning *ICLE* or Tono (2018) as to the *JEFLL corpus*. The use of LCR results from CEFR-aligned learner corpora to inform or facilitate the implementation of the CEFR/CV is, however, still limited. Among the most important LCR contributions in this respect are those by the *English Profile Project* (Salamoura, 2008) and the CEFR-J Project (Tono, 2019). The former used the *Cambridge Learner Corpus* to provide linguistic information on the language produced at each CEFR level (UCLES/CUP, 2011) and freely available online resources (eg., the English Grammar Profile and the English Vocabulary Profile). The latter employed learner corpora, among other corpora types, to adapt the CEFR for the L1 Japanese EFL context (12 sublevels), create the Vocabulary Profile and the Grammar Profile. Despite these efforts, CEFR/CV end-users and stake-holders find difficulties in the implementation of the CEFR/CV in their L1-contexts, on most occasions due to the language neutral nature of the CEFR/CV descriptors (see Díez-Bedmar & Byram, 2019; Díez-Bedmar & Luque-Agulló, 2023; Luque-Agulló & Díez-Bedmar, 2025). It is for this reason that they demand fine-tuned descriptors, i.e., CEFR/CV descriptors informed by CEFR-aligned L1-specific learner corpus results (Díez-Bedmar, 2018). In the Spanish context, the *FineDesc Project* (Grant PID2020-117041GA-I00, funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) has provided L1 Spanish CEFR/CV end-users and stake-holders’ with fine-tuned descriptors thanks to the analysis of the 1.3-million-word *FineDesc Learner* *Corpus* (Díez-Bedmar, 2025), a freely available L1-specific learner corpus by L1 Spanish monolingual students (or bilingual L1 Spanish/a co-official language in Spain). The learner corpus results have informed fine-tuned descriptors not only for the linguistic competence, but also for the sociolinguistic and pragmatic ones, when students engage in different communicative language activities at B1, B2 and C1 levels (see Díez-Bedmar et al., 2026). These fine-tuned descriptors aim at paving the way for the implementation of the CEFR/CV in the L1 Spanish context. These are just some examples which show how LCR may inform the CEFR/CV and facilitate its implementation in different contexts. Other efforts are being made by the LCR community by using either general CEFR-aligned learner corpora or L1-specific ones, as shown in some papers presented at the International Online Conference ‘Bringing together research on the CEFR/CV and LCR: a focus on descriptors’ which was organized by the FineDesc Project (https://web.ujaen.es/investiga/finedesc/index.php). It is the objective of this special issue to bring together research on the different ways how LCR may meet the CEFR/CV. Contributions which employ any reliably CEFR-aligned learner corpus with this objective in mind are welcome, whether they were presented at the conference or not. Researchers who do not have access to any CEFR-aligned learner corpus are encouraged to use the *FineDesc Learner Corpus*, freely available at www.finedesc.com. *Potential topics for this special issue are (but are not limited to):* -The fine-tuning of CEFR/CV descriptors for L1-specific contexts thanks to LCR. -The integration of CAF results in fine-tuned descriptors. -The (cross-sectional) analysis of CEFR-aligned learner corpora considering the linguistic, sociolinguistic or pragmatic competences to inform CEFR-aligned pedagogical resources/language assessment. -The exploitation of CEFR-aligned learner corpora to design tools/software which may help analyse learner corpora at different CEFR levels. -The overcoming of any difficulties in CEFR/CV implementation with the help of LCR. *Important dates* Deadline for proposals: April 30, 2026 Outcome of proposal review: May 21, 2026 Deadline for manuscript first drafts: December 1,2026 Notification of reviewer outcome: March 5, 2027 Deadline for manuscript final drafts: May 28th, 2027 Special issue publication: Autumn 2027 *Proposal format and submission* Potential contributors should prepare an extended 800-word abstract of the proposed paper following RiCL’s submission guidelines, which can be found at https://ricl.aelinco.es/index.php/ricl/about/submissions The abstract should include a tentative title, motivate the study, state the research questions, provide methodological information (learner corpus or learner corpora analysed and the procedure employed to align it/them to CEFR/CV levels as well as the statistical tests employed), tentative results and clear information on the way how the results inform the CEFR/CV and its implementation. Please submit your proposal to the special issue editor, María Belén Díez-Bedmar (belendb(a)ujaen.es), before the deadline (April 30, 2026) including in your proposal your name(s), email(s) and affiliation(s). *Peer review* All accepted manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review. *References* Council of Europe (2001). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: learning, teaching, assessment. Council of Europe Publishing. Council of Europe (2020). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: learning, teaching, assessment – Companion Volume. Council of Europe Publishing. Díez-Bedmar, M. B. (2018). Fine-tuning descriptors for CEFR B1 level: insights from learner corpora. *ELT Journal*, 72(2), 199-209. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccx052 Díez-Bedmar, M. B. (2025). FineDesc Learner Corpus 2.0 (España, 2510243469857). SafeCreative. https://www.safecreative.org/validity Díez-Bedmar, M. B., & Byram, M. (2019). The current influence of the CEFR in secondary education: teachers’ perceptions. *Language, Culture and Curriculum*,* 32*(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/07908318.2018.1493492 Díez-Bedmar, M. B., Laso-Martín, N. J., Maíz-Arévalo, C., & Carrió-Pastor, M. L. (2026). Supplement to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and the Companion Volume: L1 Spanish users (Spain, 2601214327051). SafeCreative. https://www.safecreative.org/validity Díez-Bedmar, M. B. & Luque-Agulló, G. (2023). Analysing the CEFR/CV in University Language Centres in Spain: The Raters' Perspective. In M. Fernández Álvarez & A. L. Gordenstein Montes (Eds.), *Global Perspectives on Effective Assessment in English Language Teaching* (pp. 1-33). IGI Global. Gablasova, D., Brezina, V., & McEnery, T. (2019). The Trinity Lancaster Corpus. Development, description and application. *International Journal of Learner Corpus Research*, *5*(2), 126-158. https://doi.org/10.1075/ijlcr.19001.gab Luque-Agulló, G. & Díez-Bedmar, M.B. (2025). Listening to the teachers: CEFR implementation in University language Centres in Spain. *Revista de Lingüística y Lenguas Aplicadas* (RLyLA),*20*, 72-86. https://doi.org/10.4995/rlyla.2025.21285 O’Keeffe, A., and Mark, G. 2017. The English Grammar Profile of learner competence: Methodology and key findings. *International Journal of Corpus Linguistics,* *22*(4), 457-489. https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.14086.oke Salamoura, A. (2008). Aligning English Profile research data to the CEFR. Cambridge ESOL: *Research Notes*, *33*, 5–7. Spina, S., Fioravanti, I., Forti, L., & Zanda, F. (2023). The CELI corpus: Design and linguistic annotation of a new online learner corpus. *Second Language Research*, 40(2), 457-477. https://doi.org/10.1177/02676583231176370 Thewissen, J. (2013). Capturing L2 accuracy developmental patterns: Insights from an error-tagged EFL learner corpus. *The Modern Language Journal*, *97*(S1), 77-101. Tono, Y. (2018). Corpus approaches to L2 Learner Profiling Research. In Y. N. Leung, J. Katchen, S. Y. Hwang & Y. Chen (Eds.), Reconceptualizing English language teaching and learning in the 21st century: A special monograph in memory of Professor Kai-Chong Cheung (pp. 390-402). Taipei, Taiwan: Crane Publishing Company. Tono, Y. (2019). Coming full circle – from CEFR to CEFR-J and back. CEFR Journal. *Research and Practice*, *1*, 5-17. https://doi.org/10.37546/JALTSIG.CEFR1-1 UCLES/CUP (2011). *English Profile. Introducing the CEFR for English Version 1.1*. Cambridge University Press. Wisniewski, K. (2020). SLA developmental stages in the CEFR-related learner corpus MERLIN: Inversion and verb-end structures in German A2 and B1 learner texts. *International Journal of* *Learner Corpus Research*, *6*(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1075/ijlcr.18008.wis

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IberLef 2026 - Shared Task: Multilingual Easy to Read Translation - MER-TRANS-2026 - Registration Open
by Horacio Saggion 28 Feb '26

28 Feb '26

*MER-TRANS-2026: https://lastus-taln-upf.github.io/mertrans-iberlef-2026/ <https://lastus-taln-upf.github.io/mertrans-iberlef-2026/>IBERLEF 2026: https://sites.google.com/view/iberlef-2026 <https://sites.google.com/view/iberlef-2026>Apologies for cross-postingWe are pleased to announce the launching of the Shared Task: Multilingual Easy to Read Translation (MER-TRANS) in the context of the IberLef 2026 Evaluation Forum. - Context* *Linguistic access to information is increasingly recognised as a fundamental citizens’ right. For example, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) includes accessibility as one key enabler for a more inclusive society, while the European Union adopted the European Accessibility Act (EAA) in 2019, which requires that many everyday products and services, including digital information services, comply with accessibility standards. The UNCRPD and the EAA stress that information has to be provided in accessible language, such as plain language or easy-to-read language in order to allow the different population segments with language comprehension difficulties to exercise their recognized right to participate in society and public life. Providing information in easy language in a real-world setting is challenging. High-quality, easy-to-read content must typically be written or translated by human experts following specialized guidelines, and then often validated by target readers. This manual process requires considerable effort, time, and expertise, which limits how much content can be produced or translated into easy formats. Therefore, this MER-TRANS shared task aims at advancing the state of the art in the field of automatic easy-to-read translation with specific emphasis on Romance languages, more concretely, in Catalan, Italian, and Spanish. * * - Task OverviewIn this shared task, we invite participating teams to automatically produce easy to read versions of texts and/or sentences. The texts will be sampled from the iDEM corpus, a multilingual corpus in the domain of democratic participation, which has been simplified by human experts following easy-to-read recommendations and high-quality validation procedures. There will also be a surprise language task to be revealed closer to the release of the test data. Up to three submissions per language will be allowed per participant team. - Data and EvaluationUnlike previous challenges where the data remained of restricted use, the iDEM corpus, with original and adapted versions, will be made fully available to the community, the documents for participants to produce adaptations will be provided during the test phase, and the full dataset during the IberLef workshop in September 2026. A small trial dataset will be released; it will be sampled from the iDEM corpus, considering the occurrence of different difficulties addressed by the easy-to-read adaptations. The examples will contain both the original text excerpts and easy-to-read versions. The test datawill consist of only the original complex text excerpts. Evaluation will be carried out with automatic metrics borrowed from current text simplification evaluation research, such as SARI and/or BLEUE and semantic similarity scores when appropriate. - System Description Papers and ProceedingsAll participating teams will be invited to submit a system description paper describing their methods, models, and experimental findings: further information about formatting and length will be given in due time. Submitted papers will be reviewed by at least two peer reviewers.Papers will be required to describe fully Reproducible solutions which contribute to Open Science. Accepted system description papers will be published at no cost in the Proceedings of the Iberian Languages Evaluation Forum (IberLEF 2026), hosted by CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org).Authors of accepted papers will be invited to present their work at the IberLEF 2026 workshop. Presentation at the workshop is encouraged but not mandatory for publication in the proceedings. - Who Should Participate?Participation is open to all. - Important DatesRegistration opens: Open nowRegistration closes: 5 March 2026Trial data release: 06 Mar 2026Test data release: 06 Apr 2026System outputs submission deadline : 13 Apr 2026Evaluation results published: 27 Apr 2026System Description Papers: 01 Jun 2026Papers acceptance: 14 Jun 2026Camera-ready papers due: 21 Jun 2026IberLEF 2026 Workshop: 22 Sept 2026 - How to ParticipateIn order to participate, teams must register using the registration form available at the task website https://lastus-taln-upf.github.io/mertrans-iberlef-2026/ <https://lastus-taln-upf.github.io/mertrans-iberlef-2026/>Note that registration is mandatory in order to access the data and submit system outputs. - Task OrganizersHoracio Saggion — Universitat Pompeu Fabra, SpainNelson Pérez Rojas — Universidad de Costa Rica, Costa RicaStefan Bott — Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain Nouran Khallaf — University of Leeds, UKMehrzad Tareh — Universitat Pompeu Fabra, SpainDaniel Adanza — Universitat Pompeu Fabra, SpainAlmudena Rascon — Plena Inclusion Madrid, SpainSandra Szasz — Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain* -- Horacio Saggion Full Professor / Chair in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Head of the Natural Language Processing Group - TALN Project Coordinator iDEM Project (HE) Co-PI of the AI-BOOST project (HE) PI of the IDEAL project (HE) Universitat Pompeu Fabra https://twitter.com/h_saggion https://www.linkedin.com/in/horacio-saggion-1749b916 -- Horacio Saggion Full Professor / Chair in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Head of the Natural Language Processing Group - TALN Project Coordinator iDEM Project (HE) Co-PI of the AI-BOOST project (HE) PI of the IDEAL project (HE) Universitat Pompeu Fabra https://twitter.com/h_saggion https://www.linkedin.com/in/horacio-saggion-1749b916 -- Horacio Saggion Full Professor / Chair in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Head of the Natural Language Processing Group - TALN Project Coordinator iDEM Project (HE) Co-PI of the AI-BOOST project (HE) PI of the IDEAL project (HE) Universitat Pompeu Fabra https://twitter.com/h_saggion https://www.linkedin.com/in/horacio-saggion-1749b916

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CfP - Journal of Procesamiento del Lenguaje Natural and SEPLN 2026
by Martínez Cámara 28 Feb '26

28 Feb '26

*Call for papers for issue 77 of the journal Procesamiento del Lenguaje Natural and 42nd SEPLN Conference* http://www.sepln.org/en/journal http://www.sepln.org/en/journal/author-guidelines SEPLN 2026 Conference website: https://sepln2026.org Introduction The journal Procesamiento del Lenguaje Natural aims to provide an international forum for the dissemination of high-quality scientific and technical contributions in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP). It welcomes original, unpublished work that has not been submitted simultaneously to other journals or conference proceedings. The journal promotes the advancement of research in NLP, fosters the exchange of innovative ideas, supports the identification of emerging research directions, and showcases real-world applications and technological developments in this rapidly evolving discipline. Each year, the Spanish Society for Natural Language Processing (SEPLN) publishes two issues of the journal, including original research articles, project descriptions, book reviews, and summaries of doctoral theses. The scientific quality of the journal is supported by its indexing in major international databases, including the 2024 JCR index (JIF: 1.3, JCI: 0.48, Q2-Linguistics – Q4-Computer Sciences, Artificial Intelligence ESCI), the SCImago Journal Ranking (2024 SJR: 0.570, Q2-Computer Science Applications, Q1-Linguistics and Language), the Scopus Index (2024 CiteScore: 7.3), and the SNIP index with 1.61 points. More information at: http://www.sepln.org/en/journal/quality. Topics - NLP for low-resource languages - Efficient and sustainable NLP methods - Ethics, Bias and Fairness in NLP - Trustworthy and explainability in NLP - Security and privacy in NLP - Text and Multimodal Generation - Language Modeling - Multimodality and Language Grounding to Vision - Knowledge and common sense - Computational lexicography and terminology - Linguistic theories, Cognitive Modeling and Psycholinguistics - Morphological and Syntactic analysis - Corpus linguistics - Development of linguistic resources and tools - Semantics, pragmatics, and discourse - Machine translation - Speech synthesis and recognition - Audio indexing and retrieval - Dialogue systems and interactive systems/ Conversational assistants - Monolingual and multilingual information extraction and retrieval - Question answering systems - Automatic textual content analysis - Sentiment analysis, opinion mining and argument mining - Plagiarism detection - Negation and speculation processing - Text summarization - Text simplification - Image retrieval - NLP in specific domains (Medicine, Law, Education…) Submission Information The proposal must be submitted by March 23rd, 2026, and must meet certain format and style requirements. All submissions must be in PDF format and submitted electronically using the OpenReview system. Submitted papers will be subjected to a blind review by at least three members of the program committee. Categories of papers Regular papers with original contributions will be accepted for publication in the Journal of Procesamiento del Lenguaje Natural. Research projects & system demonstration papers will be published in the CEUR proceedings Information for Authors The proposals of regular papers with original contributions can be written in Spanish or English and should be at most 10 A4-size pages of content, plus unlimited pages for references. The papers must include the following sections: - The title of the communication (in English and Spanish). - An abstract in English and Spanish (maximum 150 words). - A list of keywords or related topics (in English and Spanish). - The documents must not include headers or footers. As reviewing will be doubled-blind, the paper should not include the authors’ names and affiliation. Furthermore, self-references that reveal the author’s identity should be avoided. The articles should only include the title, the abstract, the keywords and the proposal. We recommend using the LaTeX and Word templates that can be downloaded from the SEPLN web (author guidelines have been updated): http://www.sepln.org/index.php/en/journal/author-guidelines SEPLN Workshops Proceedings. The high quality papers will be published in the issue 77 of the journal Procesamiento del Lenguaje Natural. Those papers that the reviewers assess as quality papers, but without the consideration of high quality papers will be published in the CEUR proceedings. These works will be presented as posters in the 42nd SEPLN Conference. Research project & System Demonstration Session. This session will be focused on ongoing NLP research projects and system demonstration papers. The summaries of ongoing research projects must include the following information: - Project title. - Author name, affiliation and contact information. The review of this kind of paper is not blind review. - Funding institutions. - Research Groups participating in the project. - Language: English. We will not accept research project summaries in Spanish or other languages. - An abstract of a maximum of 150 words and a list of keywords. - Minimum length: 5 A4-size pages. - Maximum length: 6 A4-size pages (including references). The System demonstration papers must be related to NLP applications, and they must describe the technical details and the NLP components used or developed. The paper must be written in English, the minimum length of the paper must be 5 A4-size pages and the maximum length is 6 A4-size pages of content with the references included. The research project summaries and the system demonstration papers will be published in the SEPLN Workshop Proceedings. Accordingly, the paper format must be in accordance with the CEUR template. We have adapted the CEUR Latex Template to SEPLN 2026 and you can download it here (LaTeX, Word). Note on camera ready The final version of the paper (camera ready) should be submitted together with a cover letter explaining how the suggestions of the reviewers were implemented in the final version. This cover letter will be considered in order to accept or finally reject the selected paper. Preprint policy The Journal allows the publication of preprints (non-refereed paper posted online, such as ArXiv) anytime, but during the review period the preprint must indicate that the paper it is “under review” in the Journal Procesamiento del Lenguaje Natural. Likewise, if the paper is accepted, the preprint must be updated with the DOI, name of the Journal and the bibliographic information of the paper. Important dates - Submission deadline: March 23rd, 2026 - Notification of acceptance: May 16th, 2026 - Camera ready: May 30th, 2026 - Publication: September 2026 - Congress: September 22-25, 2026 For all general enquiries, please contact: sepln2026(a)unileon.es All information related to the congress can be found at: https://sepln2026.org/ Editorial Committee of the Procesamiento del Lenguaje Natural

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Last deadline extension: Language Driven Deliberation Technology Workshop (DELITE 2026) @LREC 2026 - Deadline (archival/non archival): March 9th
by Gabriella Lapesa 28 Feb '26

28 Feb '26

---------------------------------------------------------- Third Call for Papers: DELITE 2026 The 2nd Workshop on Language-driven Deliberation Technology Co-located with LREC 2026, Palma, Mallorca (Spain) *** Last deadline extension: March 9th (archival and non-archival)** *** Important info: LREC has extended the early bird registration fee for workshop authors to March 31st (acceptance notification: March 25th) ----------------------------------------------------------- OVERVIEW -------- Deliberation is ubiquitous: from navigating divergent interests in everyday personal life to reaching consensus in the political decision making process, deliberation describes the communicative process by which a group of people exchange ideas, weigh different arguments, and ultimately reach mutual understanding. In recent years, deliberative processes have gained momentum and shown to improve everyday and political decision-making. For the first time, technological solutions are maturing to the point that they can be deployed to support deliberation. The DELITE workshop provides a forum for presenting new advances in technology around deliberation by addressing researchers in Natural Language Processing, human-computer interaction, corpus linguistics, political science and philosophy, as well as stakeholders and domain experts involved in integrating such technology into decision-making processes. The topic is particularly timely in the age of LLMs and collective intelligence, which has heightened the awareness of the public to the potentials and drawbacks of language technology. While LLMs are transforming the way that much AI research is carried out, it is becoming clear that handling natural argumentation, particularly the sort of discussion found in deliberative settings, presents deep challenges for LLMs that are not likely to be overcome soon. The complex pragmatic structure of such discussions, the subjectivity of the phenomena involved (emotions, storytelling), nuanced presentation, framing and reframing of ideas, and resolution of differences of opinion all lay many orders of magnitude beyond the current parameterization spaces of such models. We view deliberation as an exercise in Collective Intelligence—the enhanced capacity of groups to make decisions due to collaboration and structured interaction. AI systems should augment and never replace human deliberation, by supporting facilitators, providing discussion summaries, and amplify/enact diversity in group decision making processes. TOPICS OF INTEREST ------------------ We welcome submissions that address the gaps facing this nascent field, including the scarcity of data on large-scale deliberation, the need for stakeholder requirements, and the need for technology that fosters trust. Topics include, but are not limited to: * Deliberation theory in NLP models * In-domain versus across domain resources * Integrating language systems into deliberation processes and interfaces * Technological solutions for online deliberation at scale * Argument mining for deliberation scenarios * Visualizing language systems results for human sensemaking * Empirical foundations for evaluation * Integrating and reflecting on recent advances in LLMs for deliberation scenarios * Collective Intelligence frameworks for deliberation at scale * Human-AI collaboration in group decision-making * Explainability, ethical questions, and addressing bias APPLICATION AREAS ----------------- We welcome submissions from all areas of application, including public policy making, democratic innovations, deliberative democracy, political decision making, citizen engagement and co-creation, intelligence services and military, conflict resolution/mitigation, case analysis in healthcare, legal decision making, and scholarly discourse. SUBMISSION ---------- DELITE 2026 introduces new submission formats to foster diversity and inclusion, specifically opening the venue to junior researchers and fields where conference papers are not standard (e.g., Social Sciences). * Standard Papers: Oral and poster presentations of long and short papers. * Extended Abstracts (non-archival): A new format designed to be inclusive of researchers from fields where conference papers are not standard (e.g., Social Sciences). * PhD Project Proposals: A non-archival submission option allowing doctoral students to collect feedback on their research plans without the pressure of a full-fledged publication. * Non-Archival Reports: Poster presentations of non-archival reports of ongoing projects to serve community building. Standard papers must describe original (completed or in progress) and unpublished work. These papers can be long (8 pages, excluding references) or short (4 pages, excluding references) and must be anonymized to support double-blind reviewing, i.e., they must not include authors’ names and affiliations and should avoid links to non-anonymized repositories. Standard papers that do not conform to these requirements will be rejected without review. Extended abstracts and non-archival papers must be at most 2 pages, excluding references and an additional page as an appendix for tables/figures. Submission of all papers is electronic, using the Softconf START conference management system. Papers must follow the LREC 2026 two-column format, using the supplied official style files. The templates can be downloaded from the Style Files and Formatting page provided on the website. Please do not modify these style files, nor should you use templates designed for other conferences. Submissions that do not conform to the required styles, including paper size, margin width, and font size restrictions, will be rejected without review. Submission link:https://softconf.com/lrec2026/DELITE2026/ The LRE 2026 Map and the "Share your LRs!" initiative ------------------------------------------------------ When submitting a paper from the START page, authors will be asked to provide essential information about resources (in a broad sense, i.e., also technologies, standards, evaluation kits, etc.) that have been used for the work described in the paper or are a new result of your research. Moreover, ELRA encourages all LREC authors to share the described LRs (data, tools, services, etc.) to enable their reuse and replicability of experiments (including evaluation ones)". IMPORTANT DATES --------------------- * Archival paper submission: *** March 9th (last extension) *** * Non-archival paper submission: *** March 9th (last extension) *** * Notification of acceptance: 25 March 2026 * Camera-ready: 30 March 2026 * Workshop day: 16 May 2026 WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS ------------------- * Lucas Anastasiou, The Open University, UK * Katarina Boland, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany * Anna De Liddo, The Open University, UK * Neele Falk, University of Stuttgart, Germany * Annette Hautli-Janisz, University of Passau, Germany * Gabriella Lapesa, GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Germany & Heinrich-Heine University of Düsseldorf, Germany * Julia Romberg, GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Germany CONTACT --------------------- e-mail:lucas.anastasiou@open.ac.uk <mailto:lucas.anastasiou@open.ac.ukwebsite> website: https://idea.kmi.open.ac.uk/the-2nd-workshop-on-language-driven-deliberatio…

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LxGr2026: Call for Papers – Extended Deadline
by Costas Gabrielatos 28 Feb '26

28 Feb '26

11th Symposium on Corpus Approaches to Lexicogrammar (LxGr2026) CALL FOR PAPERS: Extended deadline for abstract submission: 20 March 2026 The symposium will take place online on Thursday 2 and Friday 3 July 2026 Invited Speakers Stefan Gries<https://www.stgries.info/> (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA) Martin Hilpert<http://members.unine.ch/martin.hilpert> (University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland) Serge Sharoff<https://ssharoff.github.io/> (University of Leeds, UK) Organiser: Costas Gabrielatos<https://ehu.ac.uk/gabrielatos> (Edge Hill University) LxGr primarily welcomes papers reporting on corpus-based research on any aspect of the interaction of lexis and grammar -- particularly studies that interrogate the system lexicogrammatically to get lexicogrammatical answers. However, position papers discussing theoretical or methodological issues, as well as descriptions or demonstrations of tools or resources are also welcome, as long as they are relevant to both lexicogrammar and corpus linguistics. If you would like to present, send an abstract of 500 words (excluding references) to lxgr(a)edgehill.ac.uk<mailto:lxgr@edgehill.ac.uk>. * Abstracts for research papers should specify the research focus (research questions or hypotheses), the corpus, the methodology (techniques, metrics), the theoretical orientation, and the main findings. * Abstracts for position papers should specify the theoretical orientation and the potential contribution to both lexicogrammar and corpus linguistics. * Abstracts for tools or resources should provide a clear description of the main functions, and specify the potential contribution to both lexicogrammar and corpus linguistics. Full papers will be allocated 35 minutes (including 10 minutes for discussion). Work-in-progress reports will be allocated 20 minutes (including 5 minutes for discussion). There will be no parallel sessions. Participation is free. For details, visit the LxGr website: https://sites.edgehill.ac.uk/lxgr If you have any questions, please contact lxgr(a)edgehill.ac.uk<mailto:lxgr@edgehill.ac.uk>. ________________________________ Edge Hill University<http://ehu.ac.uk/home/emailfooter> Modern University of the Year, The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2022<http://ehu.ac.uk/tef/emailfooter> University of the Year, Educate North 2021/21 ________________________________ This message is private and confidential. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender and remove it from your system. Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Edge Hill or associated companies. Edge Hill University may monitor email traffic data and also the content of email for the purposes of security and business communications during staff absence.<http://ehu.ac.uk/itspolicies/emailfooter>

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37th IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE 2026): First Call for Fast Abstracts and Project Highlights
by Announce 28 Feb '26

28 Feb '26

*** First Call for Fast Abstracts and Project Highlights *** 37th IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE 2026) October 20-23, 2026, 5* St. Raphael Resort and Marina Limassol, Cyprus https://cyprusconferences.org/issre2026/ A Fast Abstract (FA) or Project Highlights (PH) paper is a two-page, lightly reviewed technical article. The FA/PH track at ISSRE 2026 aims to bring together researchers and practitioners working in Software Reliability Engineering (SRE) to: • Introduce early original ideas. • Discuss relevant work-in-progress and ongoing experiences. • Challenge the SRE status quo on key topics. • Present critical analyses of prior work. • Share lessons learned from real-world SRE applications. • Propose new problems from industrial or academic experience. • Describe approaches to problems of significance that may not yet have complete results. In addition to traditional Fast Abstracts, the track welcomes Project Highlights (PH) papers. PH papers are expected to disseminate results, visions, methodologies, tools, and ongoing activities from national and international research projects (e.g., European, or multi- institutional initiatives). Project Highlights may include, but are not limited to: • Overviews of funded research projects and their objectives. • Project methodologies, architectures, and experimental frameworks. • Early or intermediate results, including lessons learned and preliminary insights. • Datasets, benchmarks, tools, platforms, and other project outcomes released or in progress. • Collaboration experiences, challenges, and emerging research directions from national or international projects. Project Highlights that can stimulate discussion and collaboration within the ISSRE community are welcome. Ongoing projects and projects completed not earlier than October 2025 are eligible. Accepted contributions will be published in the Supplemental Proceedings of ISSRE 2026 and made available via IEEE Xplore. Topics of Interest Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: • Reliability, safety, maintainability, security, survivability, resilience, robustness, and other dependability attributes. • Faults (defects, bugs, etc.), errors, failures, and other dependability threats. • Reliability of all systems, applications, networks, and software, including problems, solutions, and discussions. • Metrics, measurement, assessment, monitoring, modeling, estimation, and prediction regarding reliability. • Reliability of AI-powered software systems, including large language models (LLMs), autonomous agents, and AI-enabled applications. • Other contents about software reliability, such as normative/regulatory/ethical spaces, societal aspects, etc. Presentations The presentation might be in the form of a short talk in a Fast Abstracts/Project Highlights session or a poster. Further details about presentations and posters will be shared with authors upon notification. Submission Guidelines Manuscripts must be: • submitted via EasyChair as a single Portable Document Format (PDF) file with all fonts embedded; • written in English and be formatted according to the IEEE Computer Society Format Guidelines. Papers are submitted via Easy Chair https://easychair.org/conferences?conf=issre2026 . Manuscripts must adhere to IEEE Conference Publishing Policies. Particularly, they should NOT have been previously published or be under submission elsewhere. All submissions will be screened for plagiarized material through the IEEE Cross Check portal. Contacts Please contact the Fast Abstract/Project Highlights Co-chairs (issre2026-fast- abstracts(a)easychair.org) for any questions or further clarifications. Important Dates (AoE) • Submission deadline: June 15, 2026 • Notification to authors: August 5, 2026 • Camera ready papers: August 19, 2026 Organisation General Chairs • Leonardo Mariani, University of Milano - Bicocca, Italy • George A. Papadopoulos, University of Cyprus, Cyprus Program Coordinator • Roberto Natella, GSSI, Italy Research Program Committee Chairs • Domenico Cotroneo, UNC Charlotte, USA • Jie M. Zhang, King's College London, UK Industry Program Chairs • Jinyang Liu, Bytedance, USA • Sigrid Eldh, Ericsson AB, Sweden Workshop Chairs • Georgia Kapitsaki, University of Cyprus, Cyprus • August Shi, The University of Texas at Austin, USA Doctoral Symposium Chairs • Stefan Winter, LMU Munich, Germany • Lili Wei, McGill University, Canada Fast Abstract Chairs • Luigi Lavazza, University of Insubria, Italy • Yintong Huo, SMU, Singapore JIC2 Chair • Helene Waeselynck, LAAS-CNRS, France Publicity Chairs • Allison K. Sulivan, The University of Texas at Arlington, USA • Jose D'Abruzzo Pereira, University of Coimbra, Portugal Publication Chairs • Sherlock Licorish, Otago Business School, New Zealand • Maria Teresa Rossi, GSSI, Italy Artifact Evaluation Chairs • Naghmeh Ivaki, University of Coimbra, Portugal • Fumio Machida, University of Tsukuba, Japan Diversity and Inclusion Chair • Eleni Constantinou, University of Cyprus, Cyprus Financial Chair • Costas Pattichis, University of Cyprus, Cyprus Web Chairs • Michalis Ioannides, Easy Conferences LTD • Elena Masserini, University of Milano - Bicocca, Italy Registration Chair • Easy Conferences LTD

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Upcoming deadline for SCiL 2026 (co-located with ACL)
by robvoigt＠ucdavis.edu 28 Feb '26

28 Feb '26

Dear colleagues, We are writing to remind of the upcoming deadline for the ninth meeting of the Society for Computation in Linguistics, co-located as a workshop with the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) 2026 annual meeting in San Diego this coming July. We seek high-quality research on computational and mathematical approaches in any area of linguistics. Submissions to SCiL should involve a substantial computational and/or mathematical modeling component, make direct contact with linguistics, and be written for an interdisciplinary audience. The deadline has been extended to March 12th; more information on the submission process is available on the website for this iteration: https://sites.google.com/view/scil2026 We see this as an exciting opportunity to bridge the ACL and SCiL communities and sincerely look forward to your participation. Events will include keynote speakers Jennifer Hu and Noah Smith, a crossover panel hosted by SCiL during the main conference, and a crossover poster session to invite main conference authors to share their work during SCiL. Funding from the National Science Foundation means we also expect to be able to subsidize at least $500 of the ACL registration costs for the authors of each SCiL paper. Please feel free to contact Rob Voigt (robvoigt(a)ucdavis.edu) with any questions. Thanks and see you in San Diego! SCiL 2026 Organizers (Rob, Alex, Naomi, and Tal)

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Last CfP and Deadline Extension: The 20th Linguistic Annotation Workshop (LAW XX) @ ACL 2026
by Gessler, Luke David 27 Feb '26

27 Feb '26

DEADLINE EXTENDED TO MARCH 19, 2026 (AoE) Last Call for Papers: The 20th Linguistic Annotation Workshop (LAW XX), co-located with ACL 2026, San Diego Website: https://sigann.github.io/LAW-XX-2026/ Linguistic annotation of natural language corpora is the backbone of supervised methods in both statistical and neural natural language processing. Annotated corpora are also a major supporting source of information for unsupervised methods, multitask learning, and evaluation of both NLP tools and theories about language within and outside of linguistics. LAW-XX will provide a forum for presentation and discussion of innovative research on all aspects of linguistic annotation, including creation/evaluation of annotation schemes, methods for automatic and manual annotation, use and evaluation of annotation software and frameworks, representation of linguistic data and annotations, semi-supervised “human in the loop” methods of annotation, crowd-sourcing approaches, and more. LAW XX will also provide a forum for annotation researchers to work towards standardization, best practices, and interoperability of annotation information and software. Special Theme: Errors in Annotation The special theme of LAW XX is Errors in Annotation. In addition to LAW’s general topics, we specifically invite submissions on the matter of addressing annotations which are in some sense objectively incorrect in their substance or omissions (c.f. Klie et al., CL 2023<https://aclanthology.org/2023.cl-1.4/>)—distinct from annotator disagreement (Weber-Genzel et al., ACL 2024<https://aclanthology.org/2024.acl-long.123/>)—and the role of error analysis in improving data quality for both human-annotated and LLM-generated datasets. As data quality becomes increasingly important (human-annotated or LLM-generated), it is essential to develop techniques or tools to quantify data quality (Swayamdipta et al., EMNLP 2020<https://aclanthology.org/2020.emnlp-main.746/>). Potential topics covered include but are not limited to: * Annotation error detection * Annotation error correction * Error type classification * Error detection and correction in crowd-sourced annotations * Errors in LLM-generated annotations Important Dates All submission deadlines are 11:59 p.m. UTC-12:00 ("anywhere on Earth"). * Submission deadline: March 5, 2026 March 19, 2026 * Pre-reviewed ARR commitment deadline: March 24, 2026 * Notification of acceptance: April 28, 2026 * Camera-ready papers due: May 12, 2026 * Workshop Date: July 3, 2026 LAW XX will be hybrid, allowing both in-person and virtual presentations. Submission Information We welcome submissions of long and short papers, posters, and demonstrations relating to the special theme or any aspect of linguistic annotation, including: * Annotation procedures * Innovative automated and manual strategies for annotation * Machine learning and knowledge-based methods for automation of corpus annotation * Creation, maintenance, and interactive exploration of annotation structures and annotated data * Annotation evaluation * Inter-annotator agreement and other evaluation metrics and strategies * Qualitative evaluation of linguistic representations * Innovative means to evaluate annotation quality * Annotation access and use * Representation formats/structures for annotations of different phenomena, especially annotations* at multiple levels, and means to explore/manipulate them * Linguistic considerations for merging annotations of distinct phenomena * Annotation schemes, guidelines, and standards * New and innovative annotation schemes, comparison of annotation schemes * Methodologies and resources for annotation scheme development * Best practices for annotation procedures and/or development and documentation of annotation schemes * Interoperability of annotation formats and/or frameworks among different systems as well as different tasks, frameworks, modalities, and languages * Results from the application and evaluation of standards for linguistic annotation * Annotation software and frameworks * Development, evaluation and/or innovative use of annotation software frameworks Direct submission link: https://openreview.net/group?id=aclweb.org/ACL/2026/Workshop/LAW Pre-reviewed ARR commitment link: https://openreview.net/group?id=aclweb.org/ACL/2026/Workshop/LAW_ARR_Commit…<https://openreview.net/group?id=aclweb.org/ACL/2026/Workshop/LAW_ARR_Commit…> Note on OpenReview's moderation policy for newly created profiles: * New profiles created without an institutional email will go through a moderation process that can take up to two weeks. * New profiles created with an institutional email will be activated automatically. Submissions should report original and unpublished research on topics of interest to the workshop. We also invite substantiated position papers, in particular with regard to our special theme. Accepted papers are expected to be presented at the workshop (either in-person or virtually) and will be published in the workshop proceedings. They should emphasize obtained results rather than intended work, and should indicate clearly the state of completion of the reported results. A paper accepted for presentation at the workshop must not be or have been presented at any other meeting with publicly available proceedings. Long/short paper submissions must use the official ACL style templates<https://github.com/acl-org/acl-style-files>. Long papers must not exceed eight (8) pages of content. Short papers and demonstration papers must not exceed four (4) pages of content. References do not count against these limits. Limitation and ethical consideration sections are optional and do not count against these limits as well. Note: The appendix also does not count against the page limit but should not include essential details needed to understand/review the paper (appendices can contain details such as hyperparameters, formulas, proofs, and tables that are informative but not critical to the understanding of the paper). All submissions must be in PDF format. Reviewing of papers will be double-blind. Authors of papers that have been or will be submitted to other meetings or publications must provide this information to the workshop program chairs (law2026workshop(a)googlegroups.com<mailto:law2026workshop@googlegroups.com>). Authors of accepted papers must notify the program chairs within 10 days of acceptance if the paper is withdrawn for any reason. Following the ACL and ARR policies<https://www.aclweb.org/portal/content/report-acl-committee-anonymity-policy>, there is no anonymity period requirement.

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Free webinar: Studying Translation in the Age of AI – Why and How?
by Constantin Orasan 27 Feb '26

27 Feb '26

As part of the events organised by the Centre for Translation Studies at the University of Surrey to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the MA Translation, we are pleased to announce the following free webinar. Studying Translation in the Age of AI – Why and How? Free webinar on Wednesday, 25 March 2026, 14:00 – 15:30 GMT, online Please register here: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/6fc06c38-5ca1-468f-b93e-59b527c7c9… The translation industry has long been an early adopter of technology. From electronic dictionaries and language corpora to integrating CAT tools and machine translation into professional practice, translators have worked at the forefront of innovation for decades. Today, however, the conversation about translation and technology feels more polarised than ever. Some predict AI will replace translators altogether. Others argue there has never been a more exciting time to enter the field. So, which is it? The human element in the digital age Despite the hype surrounding AI, critical language tasks continue to depend on expert human judgement. Professional communication in medical care, law, diplomacy and international policy leaves no margin for error. Creative content demands cultural nuance that machines cannot normally achieve. Global product marketing requires sophisticated localisation strategies. And the development of AI language models, too, depends on specialists who understand how language works across contexts and cultures. Translation has never been simply about converting words from one language to another; today it increasingly involves managing digital workflows, overseeing quality assurance and collaborating effectively with AI systems. Preparing for a hybrid reality A recent landmark report by the Chartered Institute of Linguists, the Institute of Translation and Interpreting and the Association of Translation Companies, The strategic case for languages in UK higher education<https://www.iti.org.uk/resource/making-the-case.html>, highlights a growing demand for graduates who understand how language AI works, know where it fails, can use it effectively and ethically, and are prepared for a professional future combining linguistic, technological and management expertise. As we celebrate the 40th anniversary of our MA in Translation, we invite you to an exclusive webinar to explore the skills that will define the next generation of language professionals. We will examine * Why translation matters more than ever – socially, culturally, economically * The role of AI – how AI is reshaping (but not replacing) the profession * Employer expectations – what skills and profiles industry leaders are looking for * The postgraduate edge – how a Master’s degree equips you for careers in multilingual, communication, localisation, language technology and beyond University of Surrey hosts * Professor Sabine Braun, Director, Centre for Translation Studies, Co-Director, Surrey Institute for People-Centred Artificial Intelligence * Dr Dimitris Asimakoulas, Deputy Director, Centre for Translation Studies, Postgraduate Programme Director Translation & Interpreting Speakers * Lucio Bagnulo, Head of Translation and Language Strategy, Amnesty International * Professor Lynne Bowker, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Translation, Technologies and Society at Université Laval * Dr Félix do Carmo, Senior Lecturer in Translation and Natural Language Processing, Lead of Professional Development, Centre for Translation Studies, University of Surrey * Dr Kevin Lin OBE, Managing Director (Founder), KL Communications Ltd; Visiting Professor, Centre for Translation Studies, University of Surrey * Raisa McNab, Chief Executive, Association of Translation Companies * Dr Joss Moorkens, Associate Professor of Translation Studies, Dublin City University * Dr JC Penet, Reader in Translation Industry Studies and Leading Edge Curriculum Design Fellow, Newcastle University * Sara Robertson, Chief Executive, Institute of Translation and Interpreting * Professor Margaret Rogers, Professor Emerita, Founding Director, Centre for Translation Studies, University of Surrey * Giulia Tarditi, Head of Function, Localisation at Revolut * John Worne, Chief Executive, Chartered Institute of Linguists * Xiaojie Zhang, Director of Conference Division, International Maritime Organisation Join the conversation Whether you are an undergraduate considering your next step, a recent graduate, or a professional curious about the future of the industry, we look forward to seeing you there. --- Prof Constantin Orăsan Professor of Language and Translation Technologies Centre for Translation Studies<https://www.surrey.ac.uk/centre-translation-studies> Personal page: https://www.surrey.ac.uk/people/constantin-orasan Office: 06LC03, Phone: +44 (0) 1483 68 4115 Library and Learning Centre, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7XH, UK

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4th CFP - Second International Conference on Natural Language Processing ,and Artificial Intelligence for Cyber Security,(NLPAICS'2026)
by ernesto.estevanell＠ua.es 27 Feb '26

27 Feb '26

=========================================================================================================================== Second International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence for Cyber Security (NLPAICS'2026) University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain 11 and 12 June 2026 https://nlpaics2026.gplsi.es/ Fourth Call for Papers Recent advances in Natural Language Processing (NLP), Deep Learning and Large Language Models (LLMs) have resulted in improved performance of applications. In particular, there has been a growing interest in employing AI methods in different Cyber Security applications. In today's digital world, Cyber Security has emerged as a heightened priority for both individual users and organisations. As the volume of online information grows exponentially, traditional security approaches often struggle to identify and prevent evolving security threats. The inadequacy of conventional security frameworks highlights the need for innovative solutions that can effectively navigate the complex digital landscape to ensure robust security. NLP and AI in Cyber Security have vast potential to significantly enhance threat detection and mitigation by fostering the development of advanced security systems for autonomous identification, assessment, and response to security threats in real time. Recognising this challenge and the capabilities of NLP and AI approaches to fortify Cyber Security systems, the Second International Conference on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Cyber Security (NLPAICS'2026) continues the tradition from NLPAICS'2024 to be a gathering place for researchers in NLP and AI methods for Cyber Security. We invite contributions that present the latest NLP and AI solutions for mitigating risks in processing digital information. Conference topics The conference invites submissions on a broad range of topics related to the employment of NLP and AI (and in general, language studies and models) for Cyber Security, including but not limited to: _Societal and Human Security and Safety_ * Content Legitimacy and Quality * Detection and mitigation of hate speech and offensive language * Fake news, deepfakes, misinformation and disinformation * Detection of machine-generated language in multimodal context (text, speech and gesture) * Trust and credibility of online information * User Security and Safety * Cyberbullying and identification of internet offenders * Monitoring extremist fora * Suicide prevention * Clickbait and scam detection * Fake profile detection in online social networks * Technical Measures and Solutions * Social engineering identification, phishing detection * NLP for risk assessment * Controlled languages for safe messages * Prevention of malicious use of ai models * Forensic linguistics * Human Factors in Cyber Security _Speech Technology and Multimodal Investigations for Cyber Security_ * Voice-based security: Analysis of voice recordings or transcripts for security threats * Detection of machine-generated language in multimodal context (text, speech and gesture) * NLP and biometrics in multimodal context _Data and Software Security_ * Cryptography * Digital forensics * Malware detection, obfuscation * Models for documentation * NLP for data privacy and leakage prevention (DLP) * Addressing dataset "poisoning" attacks _Human-Centric Security and Support_ * Natural language understanding for chatbots: NLP-powered chatbots for user support and security incident reporting * User behaviour analysis: analysing user-generated text data (e.g., chat logs and emails) to detect insider threats or unusual behaviour * Human supervision of technology for Cyber Security _Anomaly Detection and Threat Intelligence_ * Text-Based Anomaly Detection * Identification of unusual or suspicious patterns in logs, incident reports or other textual data * Detecting deviations from normal behaviour in system logs or network traffic * Threat Intelligence Analysis * Processing and analysing threat intelligence reports, news, articles and blogs on latest Cyber Security threats * Extracting key information and indicators of compromise (IoCs) from unstructured text _Systems and Infrastructure Security_ * Systems Security * Anti-reverse engineering for protecting privacy and anonymity * Identification and mitigation of side-channel attacks * Authentication and access control * Enterprise-level mitigation * NLP for software vulnerability detection * Malware Detection through Code Analysis * Analysing code and scripts for malware * Detection using NLP to identify patterns indicative of malicious code _Financial Cyber Security_ * Financial fraud detection * Financial risk detection * Algorithmic trading security * Secure online banking * Risk management in finance * Financial text analytics _Ethics, Bias, and Legislation in Cyber Security_ * Ethical and Legal Issues * Digital privacy and identity management * The ethics of NLP and speech technology * Explainability of NLP and speech technology tools * Legislation against malicious use of AI * Regulatory issues * Bias and Security * Bias in Large Language Models (LLMs) * Bias in security related datasets and annotations _Datasets and resources for Cyber Security Applications_ _Specialised Security Applications and Open Topics_ * Intelligence applications * Emerging and innovative applications in Cyber Security _Special Theme Track - Future of Cyber Security in the Era of LLMs and Generative AI_ NLPAICS 2026 will feature a special theme track with the goal of stimulating discussion around Large Language Models (LLMs), Generative AI and ensuring their safety. The latest generation of LLMs, such as CHATGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, LLAMA and open-source alternatives, has showcased remarkable advancements in text and image understanding and generation. However, as we navigate through uncharted territory, it becomes imperative to address the challenges associated with employing these models in everyday tasks, focusing on aspects such as fairness, ethics, and responsibility. The theme track invites studies on how to ensure the safety of LLMs in various tasks and applications and what this means for the future of the field. The possible topics of discussion include (but are not limited to) the following: * Detection of LLM-generated language in multimodal context (text, speech and gesture) * LLMs for forensic linguistics * Bias in LLMs * Safety benchmarks for LLMs * Legislation against malicious use of LLMs * Tools to evaluate safety in LLMs * Methods to enhance the robustness of language models Keynote Speaker We are delighted to announce that Preslav Nakov from Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (Abu Dhabi) (https://mbzuai.ac.ae/study/faculty/preslav-nakov/) will be keynote speaker at NLPAICS 2026. Submissions and Publication NLPAICS welcomes high-quality submissions in English, which can take two forms: * Regular long papers: These can be up to eight (8) pages long, presenting substantial, original, completed, and unpublished work. * Short (poster) papers: These c in an be up to four (4) pages long and are suitable for describing small, focused contributions, ongoing research, negative results, system demonstrations, etc. Short papers will be presented as part of a poster session. The conference will not consider and evaluate abstracts only. Accepted papers, including both long and short papers, will be published as e-proceedings with ISBN will available online on the conference website at the time of the conference and are expected to be uploaded into the ACL Anthology. To prepare your submission, please make sure to use the NLPAICS 2026 style files available here: LaTeX in Overleaf: https://www.overleaf.com/read/sgwmrzbmjfhc#aeea77 Word: https://nlpaics2026.gplsi.es/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/NLPAICS2026_Proceed… Papers should be submitted through Softconf/START using the following link: https://softconf.com/p/nlpaics2026/user/ The conference will feature a student workshop, and awards will be offered to the authors of best papers. Important dates * Submissions due: 16 March 2026 * Reviewing process: 1 April - 30 April 2026 * Notification of acceptance: 5 May 2026 * Camera-ready due: 19 May 2026 * Conference camera-ready proceedings ready 1 June 2026 * Conference: 11-12 June 2026 Organisation Conference Chairs Ruslan Mitkov (University of Alicante) Rafael Muñoz (University of Alicante) Programme Committee Chairs Elena Lloret (University of Alicante) Tharindu Ranasinghe (Lancaster University) Publication Chair Ernesto Estevanell (University of Alicante) Sponsorship Chair Andres Montoyo (University of Alicante) Student Workshop Chair Salima Lamsiyah (University of Luxembourg) Best Paper Award Chair Saad Ezzini (King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals) Publicity Chair Beatriz Botella (University of Alicante) Social Programme Chair Alba Bonet (University of Alicante) Venue The Second International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence for Cyber Security (NLPAICS'2026) will take place at the University of Alicante and is organised by the University of Alicante GPLSI research group. Related events The conference school will precede the summer school _The Paradigm Shift: From Rules to Models in Natural _Language 15, 16 and 17 June 2026 (_https://summer-school.gplsi.es [1]_). Further information and contact details The follow-up calls will list keynote speakers and members of the programme committee once confirmed. The conference website is https://nlpaics2026.gplsi.es/ and will be updated on a regular basis. For further information, please email nlpaics2026(a)dlsi.ua.es Registration will open in March 2026. Links: ------ [1] https://summer-school.gplsi.es/

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