Joint Call for Tutorial Proposals

The European Chapter of the ACL (EACL), the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), and the Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP) invite proposals for tutorials to be held in conjunction with EACL 2023, ACL 2023, and EMNLP 2023. We seek proposals in all areas of computational linguistics, broadly conceived to include related disciplines. ​ We invite proposals for two types of tutorials: ​

  1. Cutting-edge: tutorials that cover advances in newly emerging areas not previously covered in any ACL/EMNLP/EACL/NAACL-HLT/AACL/COLING related tutorial (see the list of tutorials in the past 4 years).
  2. Introductory: tutorials that provide introductions to related fields that are potentially relevant for the computational linguistics community (e.g., linguistics, bioinformatics, machine learning techniques).

In both cases, the aim of a tutorial is primarily to help understand a scientific problem, its tractability, and its theoretical and practical implications. Presentations of particular technological solutions or systems are welcome, provided that they serve as illustrations of broader scientific considerations.

Tutorials will be held at one of the following conference venues: ​

  • EACL 2023 in Dubrovnik, Croatia (hybrid) on May 2-6, 2023.
  • ACL 2023 in Toronto, Canada (hybrid) on July 9-14, 2023.
  • EMNLP 2023 in Singapore on TBD, 2023.

Important Dates

EACL/ACL/EMNLP 2023 shared dates:

Proposal submission deadline December 1st, 2022
Notification of acceptance February 3rd, 2023
Camera-ready for proposals February 17th, 2023
Tutorial slides + abstract + bibliography + any other materials One month prior to the date of the tutorial

All deadlines are 11:59PM UTC-12:00 (“anywhere on Earth”).

Fee Waiving

Up to 3 instructors per tutorial can have their registration fees waived for the main conference and any subset of co-located tutorials and workshops.

Diversity And Inclusion

To foster a really inclusive culture in our field, we particularly encourage submissions from members of underrepresented groups in computational linguistics, i.e., researchers from any demographic or geographic minority, researchers with disabilities, among others. The overall diversity of the tutorial organizers and potential audience will be taken into account to ensure that the conference program is varied and balanced.

Tutorial proposals should describe and will be evaluated according to how the tutorial contributes to topics promoting diversity (e.g., working on minority languages, developing NLP for good), participation diversity (e.g., coordinating with social affinity groups, providing subsidies, making a promotional plan for the tutorial), and representation diversity among tutorial presenters. For more information or advice, organizers may consult resources such as the BIG directory, Black in AI, Disability in AI, Indigenous AI, LatinX in AI, Masakhane, 500 Queer Scientists, and Women-in-ML’s directory.

Submission Details

Proposals should use the ACL paper submission format. Authors can download the LaTeX or Word template or use the Overleaf template. Proposals should not exceed 4 pages of content (plus unlimited pages for references), should be submitted as PDF documents, and should contain the following: ​

  1. A title and authors, affiliations, and contact information.
  2. A brief description of the tutorial content and its relevance to the computational linguistics community.
  3. Type of the tutorial: introductory vs. cutting-edge.
  4. Briefly describe the target audience and any expected prerequisite background the audience should be aware of. Specification of any prerequisites for the attendees. Here are some examples:
    • Math: e.g., “Understand derivatives and integrals as found in introductory calculus”
    • Linguistics: e.g., “Be able to parse and generate text with dependency grammars”
    • Machine Learning: e.g., “Understand ‘classical’ supervised methods such as SVM and perceptron”
    • Other areas: e.g., “Familiarity with word2vec”
    • Programming or other tools: e.g., “Knowledge of Pytorch and Unix command line tools”
  5. An outline of the tutorial structure content and how it will be covered in a three-hour slot. In exceptional cases six-hour tutorial slots are available. These time limits do not include coffee breaks, e.g., a three-hour tutorial in fact occupies a 3.5-hour slot, and a six-hour tutorial occupies a 7-hour slot.
  6. Explain how the tutorial includes other people’s work. We recommend that the tutorial covers work by the presenters as well as by other researchers. The submission should explain how this breadth is ensured. Tutorials should not be “self-invited talks”.
  7. Diversity considerations, e.g., use of multilingual data, indications of how the described methods scale up to various languages or domains, participation of both senior and junior instructors, demographic and geographical diversity of the instructors, plans for how to diversify audience participation, etc.
  8. Reading list. Work that you expect the audience to read before the tutorial can be indicated by an asterisk. Recommended papers should provide breadth of authorship and include work by other authors, and work from other disciplines is welcome if relevant.
  9. For each tutorial presenter, a one-paragraph statement of their research interests and areas of expertise for the tutorial topic, as well as experience in instructing an international audience.
  10. An estimate of the audience size for the tutorial. If the same or a similar tutorial has been given before, include information on where any previous version of the tutorial was given and how many attendees the tutorial attracted.
  11. A note specifying which venue(s) (EACL/ACL/EMNLP) would be acceptable and/or preferable. Include a description of any constraints that might make the tutorial compatible with only one of these events, logistically, thematically, or otherwise.
  12. A description of special requirements for technical equipment.
  13. We intend to make tutorial presentation materials publically available (e.g., tutorial slides, captioned video recording, as well as software, data, or other resources as applicable) in the ACL Anthology. If any of your tutorial materials cannot be shared, please explain.
  14. An ethics statement that discusses ethical considerations related to the topics of the tutorial.
  15. OPTIONAL: We welcome proposals on special conference themes. If your tutorial proposal aligns with the special theme of a conference, then please explain.
  16. OPTIONAL: We invite tutorial instructors to include pedagogical material that the audience can bring into classrooms or similar spaces of discussion, to bring attention to the tutorial topic (e.g., a hands-on exercise, discussion questions, a demo, or an assignment). If you would like to provide this, then please explain.

Tutorial proposals should be submitted online using the softconf system at the following link: https://softconf.com/n/acl-tutorials2023. Proposals will be reviewed jointly by the Tutorial Co-Chairs of the conferences and by a group of external experts.

Evaluation Criteria

Each tutorial proposal will be evaluated according to its clarity and preparedness, novelty or timely character of the topic, instructors’ experience, likely audience interest, open access of the tutorial instructional material, and diversity and inclusion.

Instructor Responsibilities

Accepted tutorial presenters will be notified by February 3rd, 2023. They must then provide abstracts of their tutorials for inclusion in the conference registration material by the specific conference deadlines. The description should be in two formats: (a) an ASCII version that can be included in email announcements and published on the conference website, and (b) a PDF version for inclusion in the electronic proceedings (detailed instructions will be provided). Tutorial speakers must provide tutorial materials (e.g., slides, relevant list of papers) at least one month prior to the date of the tutorial conditioned on the final venue. The final submitted tutorial materials must minimally include copies of the course slides and a bibliography for the material covered in the tutorial. After the conference, the presenters will be invited to update their slides in the ACL Anthology (if needed).

Tutorial Chairs

Email: cl23-tutorial-chairs@googlegroups.com

EACL

  • Fabio Massimo Zanzotto, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”

ACL

  • Yun-Nung (Vivian) Chen, National Taiwan University (Taiwan)
  • Margot Mieskes, University of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt (Germany)
  • Siva Reddy, McGill University and Mila (Canada)

EMNLP

TBA