Call for Papers:

The 3rd Workshop on Predicting and Improving Text Readability for Target Reader Populations (PITR2014)

27th April 2014

in conjunction with EACL 2014, Gothenburg, Sweden

http://mcs.open.ac.uk/nlg/pitr2014/

** Extended submission deadline: 30th January 2014 **

Many NLP systems generate or reformulate human languages but how readable is the output? What makes language easy, difficult, or, indeed, a pleasure to read for different types of readers? How can existing text be manipulated to improve information access? How does the style of writing, formal vs informal, informational vs. entertaining, affect readability, user comprehension, and/or appreciation of text? The last few years have seen a resurgence of interest in these questions amongst computational linguists as attention turns to more sophisticated techniques for textual presentation and to address the widely differing needs of end users.

PITR is a cross-disciplinary workshop bringing together researchers in fields concerned with the readability, accessibility, and quality of text. We are keen to widen the scope to include researchers who might not normally attend a computational linguistics conference, e.g., psycholinguists, sociolinguists, assistive technology and educational researchers. We would welcome papers on:

* Reformulation of existing text (text-to-text systems)
* Generation of readable language from data (data-to-text systems)
* Generation of text in specific styles and registers for readability
* Evaluation of language simplification strategies
* Evaluation of the readability and quality of computer-generated text
* Evaluation of the readability and quality of machine translation output
* Prediction of aspects of text style related to readability
* Prediction of the readability of documents
* Readability issues in specialist texts such as questionnaires, exam questions, safety instructions, etc.
* Novel evaluation strategies for assessing text readability
* Novel readability metrics
* Techniques for simplifying lexis
* Techniques for simplifying syntax
* Techniques for simplifying discourse properties (making text more transparent, etc.)
* Techniques for manipulating textual layout to improve accessibility
* Techniques for making descriptions of numerical quantities more accessible
* Techniques for making technical terminology more accessible
* Techniques for making descriptions of logical statements more accessible
* Techniques for explaining complex ideas through accessible text
* Systems aimed at adults with poor literacy
* Systems aimed at children learning to read
* Systems aimed at 2nd language learners
* Systems aimed at people with language deficits (aphasia, deafness, neurodegeneration, etc.)
* Systems aimed at non-experts accessing technical material
* Models of text quality for competent language users
* Models to predict reader interest and engagement
* Models of text style with application to readability

SUBMISSIONS
Papers should prepared in EACL format (see under 'Submission Format' at http://eacl2014.org/call-for-papers). They should not exceed 8 pages in length plus up to 2 additional pages for references. These are maximum lengths; shorter papers are also acceptable.

Papers should be anonymised for blind reviewing.

Please submit your paper via the online START Conference Manager system: https://www.softconf.com/eacl2014/PITR/

Some authors will be invited to give oral presentations. All accepted authors will be expected to present a poster. Last year, the poster session was very lively, giving poster-only authors and oral-presentation authors ample opportunities to discuss their research.

IMPORTANT DATES
Submission deadline: 23rd January 2014
Notification: 20th February 2014
Camera-ready: 3rd March 2014
Workshop: 27th April 2014

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE
Stefan Bott, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
Kevyn Collins-Thompson, University of Michigan, USA
Siobhan Devlin, University of Sunderland, UK
Micha Elsner, Ohio State University, USA
Richard Evans, University of Wolverhampton, UK
Oliver Ferschke, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany
Thomas Francois, University of Louvain, Belgium
Caroline Gasperin, SwiftKey, UK
Albert Gatt, University of Malta, Malta
Raquel Hervas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
Veronique Hoste, University College Ghent, Belgium
Matt Huenerfauth, The City University of New York (CUNY), USA
David Kauchak, Middlebury College, USA
Annie Louis, University of Edinburgh, UK
Ruslan Mitkov, University of Wolverhampton, UK
Hitoshi Nishikawa, NTT, Japan
Ehud Reiter, University of Aberdeen, UK
Matthew Shardlow, Uni of Manchester, UK
Lucia Specia, University of Sheffield, UK
Ivelina Stoyanova, BAS, Bulgaria
Irina Temnikova, University of Wolverhampton, UK
Sowmya Vajjala, Uni Tuebingen, Germany
Ielka van der Sluis, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
Jennifer Williams, MIT, USA
Kristian Woodsend, University of Edinburgh, UK

ORGANISERS
Sandra Williams, The Open University, UK
Advaith Siddharthan, University of Aberdeen, UK
Ani Nenkova, University of Pennsylvania, USA