13th Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue

Event Notification Type: 
Call for Papers
Abbreviated Title: 
SIGDIAL2012
Location: 
Seoul National University
Thursday, 5 July 2012 to Friday, 6 July 2012
Country: 
Korea
City: 
Seoul
Contact: 
Gary Lee
Amanda Stent
Submission Deadline: 
Monday, 26 March 2012

CALL FOR PAPERS
SIGDIAL 2012 CONFERENCE
13th Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue
Seoul, South Korea
July 5-6, 2012
** Deadline for submissions: March 26, 2012 GMT-11 **

CALL FOR PAPERS
The SIGDIAL venue provides a regular forum for the presentation of cutting edge research in discourse and dialog to both academic and industry researchers. Continuing with a series of eleven successful previous meetings, this conference spans the research interest areas of discourse and dialogue. The conference is sponsored by the SIGDIAL organization (http://www.sigdial.org/), which serves as the Special Interest Group on discourse and dialog for both ACL and ISCA.

Topics of Interest
We welcome formal, corpus-based, implementation or analytical work on discourse and dialog including but not restricted to the following themes and topics:

1. Discourse Processing and Dialog Systems
2. Corpora, Tools and Methodology
3. Pragmatic and/or Semantic Modeling
4. Dimensions of Interaction
5. Applications of Dialog and Discourse Processing Technology
For a detailed list of topics of interest, see http://nlp.postech.ac.kr/sigdial2012/topics.htm

Special Theme
Coherence, whether understood as "general overall interrelatedness" or "continuity in meaning and context" (Louwerse and Graesser, 2005) is a topic that spans research on discourse and on dialog and has strong connections to research on coreference, discourse structure, dialog/task modeling, natural language generation, etc. The special theme for SIGDIAL 2012 is "characterizing dialog coherence", where dialog includes multi-party interaction. We welcome theoretical, analytical, computational or interdisciplinary submissions on this topic.

Special Theme
Coherence, whether understood as "general overall interrelatedness" or "continuity in meaning and context" (Louwerse and Graesser, 2005) is a topic that spans research on discourse and on dialog and has strong connections to research on coreference, discourse structure, dialog/task modeling, natural language generation, etc. The special theme for SIGDIAL 2012 is "characterizing dialog coherence", where dialog includes multi-party interaction. We welcome theoretical, analytical, computational or interdisciplinary submissions on this topic.

SUBMISSIONS
The program committee welcomes the submission of long papers, short papers, and demo descriptions. All accepted submissions will be published in the conference proceedings.

Long papers will be presented in full plenary presentations. They must be no longer than 8 pages, including title, content, and examples. Two additional pages are allowed for references and appendices which may include extended example discourses or dialogs, algorithms, graphical representations, etc.
Short papers will be featured in short plenary presentations, followed by posters. They should be no longer than 4 pages. One additional page is allowed for references and appendices.
Demonstrations will be presented in special sessions, separate from short paper presentations and poster sessions. Demo descriptions will appear in a dedicated section of the proceedings and should be no longer than 3 pages, inclusive of references. To encourage late breaking demos, demo submissions have a later deadline.

Papers that have been or will be submitted to other meetings or publications must provide this information (see submission format). SIGDIAL 2012 cannot accept for publication or presentation work that will be (or has been) published elsewhere, except for demonstrations. Any questions regarding submissions can be sent to the technical program co-chairs at program-chairs[at] sigdial.org. sigdial.org.

Authors are encouraged to submit additional supportive material such as video clips or sound clips and examples of available resources for review purposes.

Submission is electronic using paper submission software at: https://www.softconf.com/c/sigdial2012/
FORMAT
All long, short, and demo submissions should follow the two-column ACL-HLT 2012 format. We strongly recommend the use of ACL LaTeX style files or Microsoft Word style files tailored for ACL-HLT 2012 conference. Submissions must conform to the official ACL-HLT 2012 style guidelines ( http://www.acl2012.org/call/sub01.asp ), and they must be electronic in PDF. As in most previous years, submissions will not be anonymous.
MENTORING SERVICE
The mentoring service offered last year has been very beneficial. We will follow the same practice this year. Submissions with innovative core ideas that may need language (English) or organizational assistance will be flagged for "mentoring" and conditionally accepted with recommendation to revise with a mentor. An experienced mentor who has previously published in the SIGDIAL venue will then help the authors of these flagged papers prepare their submissions for publication. Any questions about the mentoring service can be addressed to the mentoring service chair, Dr. Kallirroi Georgila, at kgeorgila[at] ict.usc.edu.
BEST PAPER AWARDS
In order to recognize significant advancements in dialog and discourse science and technology, SIGDIAL will recognize two best paper awards. A selection committee consisting of prominent researchers in the fields of interest will select the recipients of the awards.

SPONSORSHIP
SIGDIAL also offers a number of opportunities for sponsors. For more information, email Jason Williams, Sponsorship Chair, at jdw[at] research.att.com.

Dialogue and Discourse
SIGDIAL authors are encouraged to submit their research to the journal Dialogue and Discourse, which is endorsed by SIGDIAL.

IMPORTANT DATES
Long and Short Papers
Submission Deadline March 26, 23:59, GMT-11, 2012
Paper Notification May 7, 2012
Final Paper Due June 4, 2012

Demos
Submission Deadline May 14, 2012
Notification May 21, 2012
Final Paper Due June 4, 2012
Conference June 17-18, 2011

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
For any questions, please contact the appropriate members of the organizing committee:

General Co-Chairs
Gary Geunbae Lee, POSTECH, South Korea
Jonathan Ginzburg, Universite Paris-Diderot, France

Technical Program Co-Chairs
Claire Gardent, CNRS/LORIA Nancy, France
Amanda Stent, AT&T Labs - Research, USA

Mentoring Chair
Kallirroi Georgila, University of Southern California Institute for
Creative Technologies

Local Chair
Minhwa Chung, Seoul National University

Sponsorships Chair
Jason Williams AT&T Labs - Research, USA

SIGDIAL President
Tim Paek, Microsoft Research, USA

SIGDIAL Vice President
Amanda Stent, AT&T Labs - Research, USA

SIGDIAL Secretary/Treasurer
Kristiina Jokinen, University of Helsinki, Finland