Industry Track: Call For Papers

The industry track at NAACL-HLT 2019 will be a venue for all members of the ACL community to share and learn about recent advances and challenges in the deployment of language processing technologies in real-world systems. Transitioning a technology to real-world industrial strength applications raises a unique set of technical issues. Such issues do not receive the deserved attention in language technology forums and are often relegated to isolated instances and vagaries of specific systems, with little effort to learn from common experiences.

Submit a Paper

Topics

We invite submissions in all technical areas of NAACL-HLT 2019 pertaining to practical issues in real-world deployment of NLP and speech processing technologies. Papers that describe key lessons learned and new challenges posed by real-world implementations are solicited, including, but not limited to, the following topics (in alphabetical order):

  • Continuous improvement of deployed systems
  • Cost considerations
  • Design of application-relevant datasets
  • Ethical issues specific to deployed systems
  • Experience papers (e.g. lessons learnt, best practices)
  • Handling unexpected inputs
  • Implementation at scale
  • Monitoring and maintenance
  • Non-standard evaluation metrics
  • Novel practical solutions to known problems
  • Novel previously unsolved problems
  • Offline and online system evaluation methodologies
  • Operational processes and workflows
  • Processing time consideration
  • System combination and hybridization

Papers highlighting interesting negative results related to real-world applications are also welcome.

Submission

Papers submitted to NAACL-HLT 2019 industry track should follow the author guidelines laid out in the calls for research track papers. Specifically:

  • Similar to the research track, authors must register the title, author list, abstract and keywords by December 3, 2018.
  • Industry track papers should not exceed six (6) pages in length (excluding references). Accepted papers will be given one additional page of content (up to 7 pages) so that reviewers’ comments can be taken into account.
  • Industry papers will be presented orally or as posters to be determined by the program committee. The decisions as to which papers will be presented orally and which ones as poster presentations will be based on the nature rather than the quality of the work. There will be no distinction in the proceedings between industry papers presented orally and those presented as posters.
  • Papers should follow the same style and format guidelines (LaTeX, Word, Overleaf) and be submitted electronically in PDF format via the NAACL-HLT 2019 online submission system.

NAACL-HLT 2019 research and industry tracks will have the same submission deadline. Submissions of identical or closely related work to multiple tracks will be rejected by all tracks.

Reviewing criteria

Submissions to the industry track should be relevant to real-world application focus of the track as described in this call for papers. Relevant papers that meet formatting requirements will be reviewed in a double-blind manner and will be assessed on the basis of their industry track relevance, contribution, clarity, completeness and novelty.

Important dates

The industry track will have the same deadlines as the research track.

Abstract submissions due
(long, short, & industry track)		 Monday December 3, 2018
Final paper submissions due
(long, short, & industry track)		 Monday December 10, 2018
Notification of acceptance Friday February 22, 2019
Camera ready papers due Wednesday April 3, 2019
All deadlines are 11.59 pm UTC -12h.

Contact Information

  • Email: naacl-2019-industry-track@googlegroups.com
  • Industry track co-chairs
    • Rohit Kumar
    • Anastassia Loukina (Educational Testing Service)
    • Michelle Morales (IBM)
  • General chair: Jill Burstein (Educational Testing Service)

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the industry track only for participants from industry?

No, the industry track welcomes participants from the entire ACL community. Researchers working on real-world applications that match the industry track call for papers are invited to submit papers. Everyone is welcome to attend industry track sessions.

What do you mean by “real-world applications”?

We are looking for applications that are deployed (or expected to be deployed) for real-world use i.e. outside controlled environments such as a laboratories, classrooms or experimental crowd-sourced setups.

Can students also submit papers to industry track?

Yes! If your work matches the industry track call for papers, consider submitting a paper to the industry track.

I work in the industry. Can I still submit my paper to the research track?

Absolutely! There are no changes to the main conference submissions. The industry track offers a forum to submit papers describing aspects of real-world applications that may differ in focus from the research track reviewing criteria.

Will the papers in the industry track be published in the proceedings?

Yes, industry track papers will be published as a separate volume of the proceedings. For example, see the NAACL-HLT 2018 proceedings.

How do I decide whether to submit to the research track or the industry track?

Papers describing key lessons learned and challenges pertaining to real-world deployment of NLP and speech technologies are best suited for industry track. Authors are advised to review the call for papers for both tracks and submit to the track that best matches your work. The list of topics and reviewing criteria may be helpful. You can also reach out to the track chairs if you need help deciding.