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[RANLP 2025 Shared Task] Sentiment Analysis on Arabic Dialects in the Hospitality Domain
by ahasis.task＠gmail.com 30 Mar '25

30 Mar '25

Call for Participation Sentiment Across Multi-Dialectal Arabic: A Benchmark for Sentiment Analysis in the Hospitality Domain We invite researchers, practitioners, and NLP enthusiasts to participate in the Sentiment Across Multi-Dialectal Arabic shared task, a challenge aimed at advancing sentiment analysis for Arabic dialects in the hospitality sector. About the Task: Arabic is one of the world’s most spoken languages, characterised by rich dialectal variation across different regions. These dialects significantly differ in syntax, vocabulary, and sentiment expression, making sentiment analysis a challenging NLP task. This task focuses on multi-dialectal sentiment detection in hotel reviews, where participants will classify sentiment as positive, neutral, or negative across multiple Arabic dialects, including Saudi, Moroccan, and Egyptian Arabic. This shared task provides a high-quality multi-dialect parallel dataset, enabling participants to explore: 1. Dialect-Specific Sentiment Detection – Understanding how sentiment varies across dialects. 2. Cross-Linguistic Sentiment Analysis – Investigating sentiment preservation across dialects. 3. Benchmarking on Multi-Dialect Data – Evaluating models on a standardised Arabic dialect dataset. Dataset Overview: - Hotel reviews across multiple Arabic dialects. - Balanced sentiment distribution (positive, neutral, negative). - Multi-Dialect Parallel Dataset – Each review is available in multiple dialects, allowing for cross-linguistic comparison. Evaluation Metrics: - Primary Metric: F1-Score. - Additional Analysis: Comparison of sentiment accuracy across dialects. Baseline System: - Pre-trained BERT-based model (AraBERT) fine-tuned on MSA and Arabic dialect data. - Participants are encouraged to improve upon the baseline model with their own techniques and use LLMs. Why Participate? - Contribute to Arabic NLP Research – Help advance sentiment analysis for Arabic dialects. - Gain Access to a High-Quality Dataset – A unique multi-dialect benchmark for future research. - Collaborate with the NLP Community – Engage with leading researchers and practitioners. - Showcase Your Work – High-performing models may be featured in a post-task publication. Timeline - Training data ready – April 15, 2024 - Test Evaluation starts – April 27, 2025 - Test Evaluation end – May 10, 2025 - Paper submission due – May 16, 2025 - Notification to authors – May 31, 2025 - Shared task presentation co-located with RANLP 2025 – September 11 and September 12, 2025 How to Participate? - Register for the task via https://ahasis-42267.web.app/ - Download the dataset and baseline system. - Develop and test your sentiment analysis model. - Submit your results for evaluation. Organising Team 1. Maram Alharbi, Lancaster University, UK 2. Salmane Chafik, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, Morocco 3. Professor Ruslan Mitkov, Lancaster University, UK 4. Dr. Saad Ezzini, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Saudi Arabia 5. Dr. Tharindo Ranasinghe, Lancaster University, UK 6. Dr. Hansi Hettiarachchi, Lancaster University, UK For inquiries, please contact us at ahasis.task(a)gmail.com

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Open RA/PhD Funded Positions in Multimodal Conversational AI ( U. Trento, Italy)
by Giuseppe Riccardi 28 Mar '25

28 Mar '25

At the Signals and Interactive Systems Lab (University of Trento, Italy) we are looking for highly motivated and talented graduate students to join our research team and work on Conversational Artificial Intelligence. This umbrella term includes the following research areas: - Natural Language Processing - Dialogue Modeling and Systems - Machine Learning - Affective Computing We are investigating and designing next-generation ML models for multimodal input /output processing in physical and hybrid environments and interactions. For thirty years, the SIS Lab has trained intelligent machines and evaluated AI-based systems in many industry sectors, from fintech to health, following ethical principles and directives from data collection, annotation, machine learning modeling, and user engagement. The lab research team is interdisciplinary and attracts researchers from computational linguistics, psychology, applied math, biomedical and electrical engineering, and computer science. Research projects and publications can be found on the SIS lab website. The department's official language (research and teaching) is English. AVAILABLE POSITIONS -Six months funded research fellowships: approximately 1.885 Euro/month gross. -Three-year funded Phd fellowships: approximately 1.885 Euro/month gross amount. For more information about the cost of living in Trento, please visit the website <https://iecs.unitn.it/prospective-student/living-in-trento> . DEADLINES Positions open until filled. REQUIREMENTS MANDATORY ( for both positions ) - Master's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Computational Linguistics, Machine Learning, or similar/related disciplines. - Excellent academic records - Excellent programming skills - Excellent command of oral and written English - Good knowledge of most of the following: experimental design methodology and statistics, natural language processing, machine learning methods - Excellent teamwork skills NICE-TO-HAVE -Experience with Vision-Language Models and their applications. -Expertise with LLM architectures, frameworks and applications. -Experience with VR and/or XR architectures, frameworks and applications. HOW TO APPLY Interested applicants should mention the position they are applying and send their CV to: Email: sisl-jobs(a)disi.unitn.it For more info: The Signals and Interactive Systems Lab <http://sisl.disi.unitn.it/>The PhD School <https://iecs.unitn.it/>The Department Information Engineering and Computer Science Department @ University of Trento <https://www.disi.unitn.it/> --- Prof. Dr.-Ing. Giuseppe Riccardi Founder and Director of the Signals and Interactive Systems Lab Department of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering Department University of Trento Room D5, via Sommarive 5 38123 Povo di Trento, Italy

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EXTENDED DEADLINE: 3rd TRR 318 Conference: Contextualizing Explanations (ContEx25)
by cimiano＠cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de 28 Mar '25

28 Mar '25

DEADLINE EXTENSION: 3rd TRR 318 Conference: Contextualizing Explanations (ContEx25) http://contex2025.net/ As AI systems are used more and more in high-stakes domains, it also becomes ever-more important to make AI systems transparent to ensure meaningful human control and empower human users to contest or override AI-based decisions. Without sufficient transparency, increasingly complex and autonomous AI systems may leave users feeling overwhelmed and out of control, which is legally and ethically unacceptable, especially in the context of high-stakes decisions. For the users to feel empowered rather than out of control, explanations need to be relevant, providing sufficient information on which basis an output can be contested or challenged. It has been increasingly noted by the XAI community that no one explanation can fit all needs. Further, recent approaches have advocated for a more participative approach to XAI in which users are not only involved but can directly shape and guide the explanations given by a certain AI System. The 3rd TRR 318 Conference: Contextualizing Explanations is an international and interdisciplinary conference focusing on the question how explanations can be contextualized to increase their relevance and empower users. Key research questions that we want to explore during the conference include: How do contextual variables influence the effectiveness of explanations? What are the relevant context factors to be taken into account in adapting an explanation to specific domains, users, or situations? How can context be represented algorithmically to support contextual adaptation of XAI explanations? What new architectures or approaches in XAI support the dynamic adaptation of explanations with respect to changing user needs? How can user modelling support a more personalized explanation process? In which ways can the dynamics of context be modelled? How can the suitability of contextually adapted explanations be studied / validated / evaluated? Which explanation processes are particularly suitable for which context? Which context-specific outcomes are influenced by explanations? How can XAI empower users across diverse contexts to make informed decisions and effectively interact with AI systems? What constitutes a useful taxonomy for categorizing contexts in which explanations are provided? What are the various contexts in which explanations are provided and utilized? The 3rd TRR318 Conference: Contextualizing Explanations invites contributions from a wide range of disciplines (computational but also human/social science) seeking to contribute to advancing research on how explanations can be contextually adapted. We invite interested participants to submit a two page abstract (+ references) using the LNCS Springer template via Easychair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=contex25 The abstracts will be peer-reviewed and appear as Proceedings published by Bielefeld University Press. The conference is hosted and supported by the TRR 318 “Constructing Explainability”: http://trr318.de <http://trr318.de/> Organizing Committee: Philipp Cimiano (Bielefeld University) Benjamin Paaßen (Bielefeld University) Anna-Lisa Vollmer (BIelefeld University) Invited Speakers: Angelo Cangelosi (University of Manchester) Virginia Dignum (Umeå University) Kacper Sokol (ETH Zurich) Important Dates: Deadline for Submissions (EXTENDED): April 16th Notification of Acceptance (EXTENDED): May 7th Conference: 17th and 18th of June, Bielefeld Prof. Dr. Philipp Cimiano AG Semantic Computing Coordinator of the Cognitive Interaction Technology Center (CITEC) Co-Director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Institute (JAII) Universität Bielefeld Tel: +49 521 106 12249 Fax: +49 521 106 6560 Mail: cimiano(a)cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de Personal Zoom Room: https://uni-bielefeld.zoom-x.de/my/pcimiano Office CITEC-2.307 Universitätsstr. 21-25 33615 Bielefeld, NRW Germany

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[Deadline in 2 weeks] CfP: 4th ACM International Workshop on Multimedia AI against Disinformation
by stanciu.cristi12＠gmail.com 28 Mar '25

28 Mar '25

4th ACM International Workshop on Multimedia AI against Disinformation (MAD’25) ACM International Conference on Multimedia Retrieval ICMR'25 Chicago, USA, June 30 - July 3, 2025 https://www.mad2025.aimultimedialab.ro/ https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=mad2025 *** Call for papers *** ************************ * Paper submission due: April 10, 2025 * Acceptance notification: April 29, 2025 * Camera-ready papers due: May 5, 2025 * Workshop @ACM ICMR 2025: June 30, 2025 Modern communication does not rely anymore solely on mainstream media like newspapers or television, but rather takes place over social networks, in real-time, and with live interactions among users. The speedup of distribution and the amount of information available, however, also led to an increased amount of misleading content, disinformation and propaganda. Conversely, the fight against disinformation, in which news agencies and NGOs (among others) take part on a daily basis to avoid the risk of citizens' opinions being distorted, became even more crucial and demanding, especially for what concerns sensitive topics such as politics, health and religion. Disinformation campaigns are leveraging, among others, AI-based tools for content generation and modification: hyper-realistic visual, speech, textual and video content have emerged under the collective name of "deepfakes", and more recently with the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) and Large Multimodal Models (LMMs), undermining the perceived credibility of media content. It is, therefore, even more crucial to counter these advances by devising new robust and trustworthy AI tools able to detect the presence of inaccurate, synthetic and manipulated content, accessible to journalists and fact-checkers. Future multimedia disinformation detection research relies on the combination of different modalities and on the adoption of the latest advances of deep learning approaches and architectures. These raise new challenges and questions that need to be addressed to reduce the effects of disinformation campaigns. The workshop, in its fourth edition, welcomes contributions related to different aspects of AI-powered disinformation detection, analysis and mitigation. Topics of interest include but are not limited to: - Disinformation detection in multimedia content (e.g., video, audio, texts, images) - Multimodal verification methods - Synthetic and manipulated media detection - Multimedia forensics - Disinformation spread and effects in social media - Analysis of disinformation campaigns in societally-sensitive domains - Robustness of media verification against adversarial attacks and real-world complexities - Fairness and non-discrimination of disinformation detection in multimedia content - Explaining disinformation detection results to non-expert users - Temporal and cultural aspects of disinformation - Dataset sharing and governance in AI for disinformation - Datasets for disinformation detection and multimedia verification - Open resources, e.g., datasets, software tools - Large Language Models for analyzing and mitigating disinformation campaigns - Large Multimodal Models for media verification - Multimedia verification systems and applications - System fusion, ensembling and late fusion techniques - Benchmarking and evaluation frameworks *** Submission guidelines *** When preparing your submission, please adhere strictly to the ACM ICMR 2025 instructions, to ensure the appropriateness of the reviewing process and inclusion in the ACM Digital Library proceedings. The instructions are available here: https://mad2025.aimultimedialab.ro/submissions/. *** Organizing committee *** Dan-Cristian Stanciu (National University of Science and Technology Politehnica Bucharest, Romania) Roberto Caldelli (CNIT and Mercatorum University, Italy) Milica Gerhardt (Fraunhofer IDMT, Germany) Bogdan Ionescu (National University of Science and Technology Politehnica Bucharest, Romania) Giorgos Kordopatis-Zilos (Czech Technical University in Prague, Czechia) Symeon Papadopoulos (CERTH-ΙΤΙ, Greece) Adrian Popescu (CEA LIST, France) Vera Schmitt (Technical University Berlin, Germany) The workshop is supported under the following projects: (i) UEFISCDI DeteRel SOL12/2024 Detection of relationships between entities in unstructured and structured data sets (https://deterel.aimultimedialab.ro/), (ii) AI4Debunk (https://ai4debunk.eu/), (iii) vera.ai “VERification Assisted by Artificial Intelligence” (https://www.veraai.eu/), and (iv) News-Polygraph (https://news-polygraph.com/). On behalf of the organizers, Cristian Stanciu https://www.aimultimedialab.ro/

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Webminar by Emanuele Bugliarello (Google DeepMind)
by HiTZ zentroa 28 Mar '25

28 Mar '25

**** We apologize for the multiple copies of this email. In case you are already registered to the next webinar, you do not need to register again. **** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dear colleague, We are happy to announce the next webinar in the Language Technology webinar series organized by the HiTZ Chair of AI&LT (https://hitz.eus). You can view the videos of previous webinars and the schedule for upcoming webinars here: http://www.hitz.eus/webinars Next webinar: *Speaker: *Emanuele Bugliarello (Google DeepMind) *Title: *Towards Inclusive Multimodal AI *Date: *Thursday, April 3, 2025 - 15:00 CET *Summary: *Visual assistants are becoming ubiquitous, yet their effectiveness varies drastically across languages and cultures. This talk presents an overview of the critical issue of multicultural disparity in image–text models. We'll explore this gap through three lenses: evaluation, training, and generation. First, I'll introduce benchmarks like MaRVL designed to quantify multilingual and multicultural competence. Next, we'll delve into techniques for mitigating these disparities in model training. Finally, we'll examine the emerging challenges and opportunities in multicultural visual generation. *Bio: *Emanuele Bugliarello is a research scientist at Google DeepMind based in Grenoble, France where he works on improving evaluation and capabilities of multimodal generative models. He completed his PhD in the NLP Section at the University of Copenhagen, while spending time at DeepMind, Google, Mila and Spotify. Previously, he studied computer and communication sciences at EPFL, Tongji University and Politecnico di Torino. * Upcoming webinars:* · André F. T. Martins (Thursday, May 8, 2025) · Mirella Lapata (Thursday, June 5, 2025) If you are interested in participating, please complete this registration form: http://www.hitz.eus/webinar_izenematea If you cannot attend this seminar, but you want to be informed of the following HiTZ webinars, please complete this registration form instead: http://www.hitz.eus/webinar_info Best wishes, HiTZ Zentroa P.S: HiTZ will not grant any type of certificate for attendance at these webinars.

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[CfP] 1st CfP: GOBLIN Workshop on Knowledge Graph Technologies || June 12, 2025 || Leipzig, Germany
by DBpedia 28 Mar '25

28 Mar '25

==== *1st GOBLIN Workshop on Knowledge Graph Technologies* Leipzig, Germany June 12, 2025 https://cost.eu/actions/CA23147/ ==== The 1st GOBLIN Workshop on Knowledge Graph Technologies welcomes papers on novel scientific research and innovations relevant to Knowledge Graphs, their applications, and associated technologies. We encourage submissions at the intersection of Knowledge Graphs with fields such as Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, data science, and automation. Submissions should be original and must not have been published elsewhere in any form or language. Each submission will receive at least three independent reviews and will be evaluated based on novelty, technical quality, reproducibility, and practical significance. = Topics of Interest = Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: * Modeling, designing, and integrating KGs, including ontology engineering and enrichment * Development, publication, maintaining, and versioning of knowledge graphs, including schema evolution and data updates * Techniques for extracting, linking, and improving knowledge graphs, ensuring data quality and consistency * Methods for reasoning and discovering insights, patterns, and relationships within large-scale KGs * Strategies for safeguarding knowledge graphs, addressing access control, bias detection, and data protection * Leveraging KGs in deep learning, large language models, and natural language processing, KGs for LLMs and LLMs for KGs * Enhancing search, recommendations, and question-answering systems using knowledge graph-based techniques * Success stories and lessons learned in real-world implementations of KGs in healthcare, finance, e-commerce, manufacturing, and beyond * Applications of KGs in various contexts, such as content analysis, misinformation detection, and social media insights * Evaluation of knowledge graph development tasks based on LLMs/GenAI * Knowledge Graph-based retrieval augmented generation (RAG) = Important Dates = * Submission Deadline: April 27, 2025 (11:59 pm, Anywhere On Earth time, UTC-12) * Notification of Acceptance: May 4, 2025 (11:59 pm, Anywhere On Earth time, UTC-12) Submissions will be through EasyChair: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=goblin25 = Author Guidelines and Submission = * *Full research papers*: 4-6 pages + max 2 pages references * *Short research papers*: 2-4 pages + 1 page references * *In Use and Experience papers*: 2-4 pages + 1 page references * *Position and Vision papers*: 2-4 pages + 1 page references * *System/demo papers*: 2-4 pages + 1 page references Submissions must be in English, original, and not under review elsewhere. Papers should follow the *Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science* style: https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/springer-lecture-notes-in-computer… = Review and Evaluation Criteria = Each submission will be reviewed by at least three Programme Committee members. The reviewing process is double-blind, but reviewers may disclose their identities. Papers will be evaluated based on: * Appropriateness * Originality, novelty, and innovativeness * Impact of results * Technical quality of methods * Soundness of evaluation * Proper comparison to related work * Clarity and quality of writing * Reproducibility of results and resources = Financial Support for Authors = The GOBLIN COST Action has allocated a budget to support travel expenses for authors of accepted papers. One author per accepted paper may apply for financial support, subject to budget availability and COST reimbursement rules: https://www.cost.eu/uploads/2025/02/COST-094-21-V2.0-Annotated-Rules-for-CO… = Proceedings = Accepted papers will be published on Zenodo and shared on the workshop and GOBLIN COST Action websites. = Workshop Chairs = * Blerina Spahiu, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy * Milan Dojchinovski, InfAI/DBpedia Association, Germany For inquiries: goblin25(a)easychair.org = Programme Committee = * Giedre Valunaite Oleskeviciene, Mykolas Romeris University, Lithuania * Krzysztof Węcel, Poznań University of Economics and Business, Poland * Verginica Mititelu, Romanian Academy Research Institute for AI, Romania * Jorge Gracia, University of Zaragoza, Spain * Weiler Andreas, ZHAW School of Engineering, Switzerland * …to be updated = Local Organisers = * Milan Dojchinovski, InfAI/DBpedia Association, Germany * Julia Holze, InfAI/DBpedia Association, Germany = Acknowledgment = This workshop is organized as part of the GOBLIN COST Action: CA23147 – Global Network on Large-Scale, Cross-domain and Multilingual Open Knowledge Graphs, supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology): https://www.cost.eu

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Registration open for Corpus Linguistics 2025
by Robbie Love 28 Mar '25

28 Mar '25

Dear colleagues I am pleased to confirm that registration is now open for the international Corpus Linguistics conference 2025 (CL2025). CL2025 is co-organised by Aston University, Birmingham City University, and the University of Birmingham and will take place from Monday 30th June - Thursday 3rd July 2025 at Aston University. Information about fees and registration instructions can be found on the conference website: https://www.cl2025.co.uk/registration Registration is also open for the pre-conference workshop day, to be held on Sunday 29th June at the University of Birmingham. We are pleased to confirm a programme of six workshops - details available here: https://www.cl2025.co.uk/programme/workshops KEY DATES * Registration opens: 28th March 2025 * Early bird registration deadline: 9th May 2025 * Final registration deadline: 13th June 2025 * Conference dates: 30th June - 3rd July 2025 PLENARY SPEAKERS * Laurence Anthony (Waseda University, Japan) * Gavin Brookes (Lancaster University, UK) * Elizabeth Hanks (Northern Arizona University, USA) * Pascual Pérez-Paredes (University of Murcia, Spain) * Anna Marchi (University of Bologna, Italy) & Charlotte Taylor (University of Sussex, UK) For further information, please visit the conference website at www.cl2025.co.uk<http://www.cl2025.co.uk> or write to the CL2025 organising committee at corpuslinguistics2025(a)gmail.com<mailto:corpuslinguistics2025@gmail.com>. Best wishes Robbie Love On behalf of the CL2025 Organising Committee: Matt Gee (Birmingham City University), Andrew Kehoe (Birmingham City University), Joyce Lim (Aston University), Robbie Love (Aston University), Mark McGlashan (University of Liverpool), Akira Murakami (University of Birmingham), Paul Thompson (University of Birmingham) Dr Robbie Love (he/him) BA (Hons), ma, phd, cdls, fhea Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics Programme Development Lead Department of Communication and Culture, School of Law and Social Sciences Aston University, Birmingham, UK [Aston University] Newsletter Editor, British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL)<https://www.baal.org.uk/> Convenor, BAAL Corpus Linguistics Special Interest Group<https://baal-clsig.weebly.com/> Organising Committee, Corpus Linguistics Conference 2025<https://www.cl2025.co.uk/> Research profile: research.aston.ac.uk/en/persons/robbie-love<https://research.aston.ac.uk/en/persons/robbie-love> Website: robbielove.org/<https://robbielove.org/> See me in Les Misérables<https://www.atgtickets.com/shows/bmos-presents-les-miserables-let-the-peopl…> at the Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham, 10th-14th June!

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ArabicNLP 2025 - First Call For Papers
by Salam Khalifa 28 Mar '25

28 Mar '25

Hello all, *** Apologies for cross-posting *** *The Third Arabic Natural Language Processing Conference (ArabicNLP 2025) * *Co-located with EMNLP 2025 in Suzhou, China, November, 2025. (Hybrid Mode).* *Conference URL*: https://arabicnlp2025.sigarab.org/ We invite long (up to 8 pages), short (up to 4 pages), and demo paper (up to 4 pages) submissions. Long and short papers will be presented orally or as posters as determined by the program committee; presentation mode does not reflect the quality of the work. Theme: Bridging Modalities: Advancing Arabic NLP Submissions may include work in progress or completed research, with a clear focus on Arabic NLP, covering standard Arabic, dialectal, or classical. This year, we focus on advancing the three key modalities: text, speech, and vision. We encourage research that explores modeling, novel applications, and new resources. Papers on related languages, such as Semitic languages or those using Arabic script, are welcome if they offer insights relevant to Arabic NLP. Work using Arabic resources for other languages is also encouraged. We welcome descriptions of commercial systems, position papers, and surveys on the above topics, with detailed information on technical contributions and added value to the community. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: Enabling Technologies: - Text: Language models, diacritization, morphological analysis, lemmatization, tokenization, POS tagging, syntactic and semantic parsing, named entity recognition, disambiguation, sentiment analysis, Arabic dialect modeling, etc. - Speech & Vision: Speech recognition, speech synthesis, dialect identification, optical character recognition, image/video understanding, image/video generation, etc. Applications: Assistive technologies, human-computer interaction, social media analytics, retrieval-augmented generation, agentic applications.Resources: Multimodal corpora (text, speech, vision), annotation tools, lexical and dictionaries, etc. Conference Paper Submission URL: <https://softconf.com/emnlp2022/WANLP2022> TBA Important Dates for Conference Papers - June 22, 2025: Abstract submission for conference papers due date - June 29, 2025: Conference paper due date - August 03, 2025: Reviews submission deadline - August 24, 2025: Rebuttal period ends - August 31, 2025: Notification of acceptance - September 21, 2025: Camera-ready papers due - November, 2025: ArabicNLP conference All deadlines are 11:59 pm UTC -12h <https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zone/timezone/utc-12> (“Anywhere on Earth”). If you have any questions, please contact us at: arabicnlp-pc-chairs(a)sigarab.org The ArabicNLP 2025 Organizing Committee Best, -- Salam Khalifa

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Call for Special Issue Proposals - Journal Natural Language Processing
by Ranasinghe, Tharindu 28 Mar '25

28 Mar '25

Journal Natural Language Processing (formerly Journal of Natural Language Engineering) *** Call for Special Issue Proposals *** In recent years the area of Natural Language Processing (NLP) has enjoyed unprecedented developments since the emergence of Deep Learning and, lately, Large Language Models. At the same time, NLP is following the trend of many other areas in becoming highly specialised, with a number of application-orientated and narrow-domain topics emerging or growing in importance. These developments, often coinciding with a lack of related literature, necessitate and warrant the publication of specialised volumes focusing on a specific topic of interest to the NLP research community. The Journal Natural Language Processing (formerly Journal of Natural Language Engineering), which features six 160-page issues per year and has had its impact factor increase yearly, invites proposals for special issues on a competitive basis covering any topics in applied NLP which have emerged as important recent developments and have attracted the attention of a number of researchers. The Journal Calls for Proposals for special issues have resulted in high-quality outputs and this year we look forward to another successful competition. Proposals on topics covering a variety of methods, tasks, resources and applications from Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics, Speech and Language Processing, Text Analytics and related areas are eligible. Special issues on timely NLP topics such as latest language models including Large Language Models/Generative AI, are welcome. Special issue proposals may be based on a successful workshop or a body of work associated with a particular group or section of the community. In the case of papers previously submitted to workshops, the Guest Editors will not be able to re-use previous workshop reviews. In addition, the call for papers of the accepted proposals must be open to all interested parties and all authors will be given equal treatment; in the case of proposals based on previous workshops, submissions cannot be limited to workshop participants only. Prospective proposers are also encouraged to consult the successful Journal columns "Industry Watch" and "Emerging Trends" for additional inspiration. Interested parties have the option of preliminary feedback by emailing expressions of interest accompanied by a brief description of the intended special issue to the Executive Editor (Ruslan.Mitkov(a)ua.es). He will give a brief indication of whether the topic is appropriate to the Journal. In the case of initial positive feedback, the prospective Guest Editors will be asked to submit a proposal for a special issue that will be reviewed by the Editors of the Journal and by other members of the Journal Editorial Board. The proposal for a special issue should include a brief outline of the field and rationale as to why it is important to launch a special issue on the particular topic of interest at the current time. It should include a relevant literature survey (related previous special issues, volumes, workshop and conference proceedings) and should explain the added value of the proposed special issue against the background of other relevant or competing publications and volumes (if applicable). It is desirable that evidence for the estimate of expected submissions to the special issue be provided and justified. The proposals should also include a tentative Guest Editorial Board. It is desirable that at least one (preferably two) of the members of the Guest Editorial Board is on the Editorial Board of the Journal Natural Language Processing. The proposal should also include a tentative time-scale for the production of the special issue (the time-scale committed to in the proposal should be adhered to, if the proposal is accepted), and information about the prospective Guest Editors such as relevant experience, publications etc. Time-scale - Deadline for submission of special issue proposals: 28 April 2025 (proposals to be emailed to Ruslan.Mitkov(a)ua.es with a copy to NLP(a)cambridge.org) - Notification of acceptance/rejection: 19 May 2025 - Calls for papers related to the successful proposals (at least 2 calls are recommended): 7 June 2025 first call July-September 2025 second (and third call, if applicable) Once the special issue is approved and launched, Guest Editors are expected to adhere to the same reviewing and acceptance standards as regular issues of the Journal. In particular, each submission needs to be reviewed by three members of the Guest Editorial Board or other experts in the field. To ensure geographical diversity and balance, and to avoid over-reliance on the same reviewers, each submission must not be reviewed by three experts from the same country, and no single reviewer should evaluate more than two submissions. If the Executive Editor is not satisfied with the review process for a special issue paper, he may either reject the paper or send it for additional review. As a last resort, the Executive Editor has the discretion to reject the entire special issue if the reviewing practices are found to be flawed. All special issues are required to include a survey of the field (at least 15 pages) as its first article, which can be written either by the Guest Editors or experts in the field commissioned by the Guest Editors. This is in addition to a 1-2 page preface by the Guest Editors. Best Regards Dr Tharindu Ranasinghe | Lecturer in Security and Protection Science School of Computing and Communications | Lancaster University Contact me on Teams<https://teams.microsoft.com/l/chat/0/0?users=t.ranasinghe@lancaster.ac.uk> www.lancaster.ac.uk<https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/>

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Workshop "Studying the Language of Young Learners" - submission deadline extended
by Valentin Werner 28 Mar '25

28 Mar '25

Dear colleagues, Due to multiple requests, we're happy to extend the submission deadline of the following event to 20 April: Studying the Language of Young Learners Workshop at the University of Bamberg, Germany, 17 to 18 September 2025, organized by Anna Rosen (University of Freiburg), Robert Fuchs (University of Bonn) & Valentin Werner (University of Bamberg) as part of the projectYoung German Learner English <https://www.ygle.de/>(funded by the German Research Foundation). In research on Second Language Acquisition (SLA), and in the domain of Learner Corpus Research (LCR) specifically, there has been a tendency to rely on material from advanced learners, often university students, given their comparatively easy accessibility for researchers (Gilquin, 2015; Plonsky, 2017). In consequence, young(er) second language (L2) learners, typically found within institutional (secondary school) contexts, are severely underrepresented (Tracy-Ventura et al., 2021). However, this underrepresented group is of great theoreticalsignificance (Myles, 2015, 2021), as these learners exemplify foundational learning stages. They are also of appliedinterest in language education, as vastly more monetary and personnel resources are devoted to teaching languages in schools than at universities. As a consequence, improvements in teacher education and teaching practices drawing on insights from SLA and LCR could yield substantial benefits to society. In the broader context of calls for more diversity in LCR and SLA (e.g. Paquot, 2024), this workshop is intended as a meeting ground for researchers who engage with young learner (inter-)language to share insights from their current projects. We invite single- or multiple-authored papers on relevant empirical research and encourage contributions that, for instance, * analyze and interpret patterns found in young learner (inter-)language; * illustrate (young) learner trajectories; * compare and contrast data from L1 and L2 learners; * work with innovative tasks for data elicitation; * triangulate approaches (e.g. corpus-based and experimental or questionnaire-based ones). The workshop will feature two keynotes by * Shin’ichiro Ishikawa <http://language.sakura.ne.jp/s/eng.html>(University of Kobe, Japan), leader of the ICNALE <https://language.sakura.ne.jp/icnale/>project * Olga Lopopolo <https://www.eurac.edu/en/people/olga-lopopolo>(Eurac Research, Bolzano, Italy), co-compiler of the LEONIDE <https://www.porta.eurac.edu/lci/leonide/>corpus Moreover, all participants will be invited to interact in a collaborative breakout sessionon future challenges and trends in research on young learners. We encourage submissions by emerging (non-tenured) researchers and will award a best paper prizeamong those eligible.This workshop is co-located with the summer school Methods and Developments in Learner Corpus Research. The working languageof the event is English, and we are open to contributions on all target languages. The workshop is primarily an in-person event, but we may accept a limited number of online contributions. The focus of papers should lie primarily on empirical results and their interpretation. Specific methodological issues, which may be at stake in research on young learner language, will be addressed in a second workshop, planned for 2026. Please submit your abstracts (in the range of 400–500 words + potentially a data table or figure for illustration + references; please use APA style) before *20 April 2025* at https://easyabs.linguistlist.org/conference/SLYL/ <https://easyabs.linguistlist.org/conference/SLYL/>. You will receive feedback on acceptance in May 2025. References Gilquin, G. (2015). From design to collection of learner corpora. In S. Granger, G. Gilquin & F. Meunier (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Learner Corpus Research(pp. 9–34). Cambridge University Press. Myles, F. (2015). SLA theory and Learner Corpus Research. In S. Granger, G. Gilquin & F. Meunier (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Learner Corpus Research(pp. 309–331). Cambridge University Press. Myles, F. (2021). Commentary: An SLA perspective on Learner Corpus Research. In B. Le Bruyn & M. Paquot (Eds.), Learner Corpus Research Meets Second Language Acquisition(pp. 258–273). Cambridge University Press. Paquot, M. (2024). Learner corpus research: A critical appraisal and roadmap for contributing (more) to SLA research agendas. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 20(3), 567–590. Plonsky, L. (2017). Quantitative research methods in instructed SLA. In S. Loewen & M. Sato (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Instructed Second Language Acquisition(pp. 505–521). Routledge. Tracy-Ventura, N., Paquot, M. & Myles, F. (2021). The future of corpora in SLA. In N. Tracy-Ventura & M. Paquot (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Corpora(pp. 409–424). Routledge. -- Prof. Dr. Valentin Werner Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg Englische Sprachwissenschaft einschl. Sprachgeschichte D-96045 Bamberg +49 951 863 2277 www.uni-bamberg.de/eng-ling

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