TAC 2009 Summarization Track
 
The goal of the Summarization Track is to foster research on systems that produce short, coherent summaries of text.  The 2009 Summarization Track has two tasks:
- Update Summarization: The update summarization task is to write a short (~100 words) summary of a set of newswire articles, under the assumption that the user has already read a given set of earlier articles.  The summaries will be evaluated for overall responsiveness and content (based on Columbia University's Pyramid Method).  The update summarization task was first run on a large scale in the TAC 2008 Summarization Track.
- Automatically Evaluating Summaries Of Peers (AESOP):  The AESOP task is to automatically score a summary for a given metric.  The focus in 2009 is on metrics that reflect summary content, such as overall responsiveness and Pyramid scores.  AESOP is a new task in 2009 and complements the basic summarization task by building a collection of automatic evaluation tools that support development of summarization systems.
NIST will distribute all required test data at no cost to track participants via password-protected web pages.  Test documents for summarization will come from the AQUAINT-2 collection, and track participants must submit the AQUAINT-2 User Agreement to NIST.
Mailing List
The mailing list for the Summarization Track is [email protected].  The list is used to discuss and define the task guidelines for the track, as well as for general discussion related to summarization and its evaluation.  To subscribe, send a message to [email protected] such that the body consists of the line:
                   subscribe duc_list <FirstName> <LastName>
In order for your messages to get posted to the list, you must send
them from the email address used when you subscribed to the list.  
To unsubscribe, send a message from the subscribed email address to [email protected] such that the body consists of the line:
                   unsubscribe duc_list 
For additional information on how to use mailing lists hosted at NIST,
send a message to [email protected] such
that the body consists of the line:
                   HELP
Schedule
| Preliminary TAC 2009 Summarization Track Schedule | 
|---|
| July 1 | Release of test data (Update task) | 
| July 15 | Deadline for participants' submissions (Update task) | 
| August 24 | Release of test data (AESOP) | 
| August 30 | Deadline for participants' submissions (AESOP) | 
| September 4 | Release of individual evaluated results (Update task, AESOP) | 
| September 25 | Deadline for TAC 2009 workshop presentation proposals | 
| October 22 | Deadline for systems' reports |