European Language Grid

Language Resources and Evaluation (LRE) Journal

Special issue on Language Technology Platforms

Call for Submissions

Deadline for Submissions: 31 August 2021

Guest Editors:
Georg Rehm (DFKI) – georg.rehm@dfki.de
Stelios Piperidis (ILSP) – spip@athenarc.gr
Kalina Bontcheva (USFD) – k.bontcheva@sheffield.ac.uk
Khalid Choukri (ELDA) – choukri@elda.org
Jan Hajic (CUNI) – hajic@ufal.mff.cuni.cz

Introduction and Context

Submissions are invited for papers to a special issue of the journal “Language Resources and Evaluation” on Language Technology platforms.

With the increasing number of platforms, grids and infrastructures in the wider area of Language Technologies (LT), NLP, NLU, speech (including conversational agents and personal assistants), interaction and language-centric AI, there is a growing need for sharing experiences, approaches and best practices eventually to learn and benefit from the work of others and also, practically, to start a collaboration towards LT platform interoperability.

This LRE Journal Special Issue aims to address all smaller and larger language grids, language-related infrastructures and platforms (including general and domain-specific) as well as research projects that touch upon one or more of the topics mentioned below, both in Europe and world-wide. With its origin in the 1st International Workshop on Language Technology Platforms (IWLTP 2020), the goal of this LRE Journal Special Issue is to assemble submissions from representatives of relevant initiatives and interested parties to present their observations, experiences, solutions, best practices as well as current and future challenges. The LRE Journal Special Issue also addresses the aspect of fragmentation in the Language Technology landscape, especially in Europe. Instead of “platform islands” that simply co-exist side by side, possibly even competing with each other, we want to foster the discussion how our platforms can be made interoperable and how they can interact with one another to create synergies towards a productive LT platform ecosystem.

The long-term vision of platform interoperability has several prerequisites including technical requirements that need to be addressed, for example, through the use of common standards, but also community-related aspects that need to be addressed and strengthened through open discussions and further joint development. Both aspects are covered by this LRE Special Issue.

Topics of Interest

In the list of topics below, the term “Language Technology (LT)” comprises Natural Language Processing (NLP), Natural Language Understanding (NLU), all types of speech and conversational technologies, as well as language-centric AI and also general AI. The term “platform” includes notions such as, among others, infrastructures, frameworks, clouds etc.

LT platforms: architectures and approaches (including commercial and non-commercial; national and international; domain-specific and general purpose; all countries, regions and continents)
LT platform interoperability: standards, APIs, workflows, as well as the exchange of services, models, data and metadata
Data and metadata exchange formats and harvesting (including taxonomies, ontologies and other forms of semantic descriptions of repository records)
Operational and legal policies as well as governance structures for LT platforms (GDPR, data management, licensing, user authentication and authorisation, billing, business models, ethical considerations)
Means by which one can address the problem and challenge of accessing language data and LT software that is not entirely free to use.
(Cloud-based) containerisation and virtualisation technologies for LT platforms
Training, re-training, (up/down)scaling and adaptation of models; connecting data sets, tools and machine learning frameworks
LT platforms and challenges regarding the availability of CPU/GPU resources, practical issues in load balancing, bandwidth (re)allocation and regulation, power consumption
From (general or domain-specific) AI platforms and (general or domain-specific) LT platforms and back again
Community-related aspects of LT platforms

We invite contributions on the topics mentioned above or on related topics of interest. We also invite authors to submit contributions on the current situation of their platform-related projects or initiatives (including technical, governance, community, uptake, interoperability, social and legal aspects). We especially invite all relevant international or national grid, platform, cloud or infrastructure projects to submit contributions.

Important Dates

Call for papers issued:	March 2021
Submissions due:	31 August 2021
Author notification:	January 2022
Final manuscripts submitted:	mid 2022

Types of Papers

Full-Length Papers should describe original, substantive research results involving any aspect of the creation, use, or evaluation of language resources, or provide a detailed description of a new and substantial major resource. In the latter case, the submission should provide a detailed description of the methods used to create and evaluate the resource and provide a comparison with similar resources, where appropriate. Full-length submissions are typically 18-25 pages in length.

Survey Articles provide a comprehensive overview of some area or substantial resource relevant to the LRE readership. Survey articles should be written with an eye toward providing an entry point for those who work in the field but not familiar with the particular area or resource, including context, history, and comprehensive references. Survey articles follow the same format as full-length papers.

Project Notes may describe significant interim research or resource development results, or provide a description of software, standards, minor resources, or projects that are of interest to the journal’s readership. Project notes are typically 8-10 pages in length, but no minimum or maximum length is required.

Squibes provide a forum for expressing an opinion on topics of interest to the LRE readership. We are especially interested in articles that provide a perspective and/or consider solutions or ways forward for issues of current interest to the field. Squibs are typically 6-8 pages in length.

Manuscript Submission

Submission of a manuscript implies: that the work described has not been published before; that it is not under consideration for publication anywhere else; that its publication has been approved by all co-authors, if any, as well as by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – at the institute where the work has been carried out. The publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

Permissions

Authors wishing to include figures, tables, or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.

Online Submission

Please go to https://www.springer.com/journal/10579/submission-guidelines and follow the hyperlink “Submit manuscript” on the right and upload all of your manuscript files following the instructions given on the screen (please use the article type “S.I.: LTP”, for “Special Issue: Language Technology Platforms”).

Please ensure you provide all relevant editable source files. Failing to submit these source files might cause unnecessary delays in the review and production process.