TAC 2008 Tracks
TAC 2008 has three tracks: Question Answering, Recognizing
Textual Entailment, and Summarization. Organizations may choose to
participate in any or all of the tracks. Each track is a continuation
of an evaluation series previously organized under different
frameworks, though specific tasks in a track may differ from previous
years. Below is a brief summary of the tracks. The exact definition
of the tasks to be performed in each track for TAC 2008 is
formulated and discussed on the track mailing list.
Applying to participate in a TAC track does not automatically
add you to the track's mailing list; if you are not already on the
mailing list, you must subscribe yourself by following the
instructions for contacting that mailing list as given in the track
web page. If you were previously subscribed to the mailing list, you
do not have to re-subscribe; track mailing lists are for anyone
interested in the problem, rather than specifically for TAC
participants, and thus carry over from year to year. For questions
about the track, send mail to the track coordinator (or post the
question to the track mailing list once you join).
Each track has its own set of deadlines for submitting results,
which are given in the final track guidelines. Results are generally due
by very early August to give the assessors time to judge the results.
Tracks and tasks with smaller assessing constraints (such as the RTE
Track) may have later deadlines.
For most tracks, the
judgments against which each system's output are scored are
made by experienced assessors based on manual analysis and the output
of all track participants.
All results submitted to TAC are archived on the TAC web site and
published in the (publicly available) conference proceedings.
Dissemination of TAC work and results other than in the conference
proceedings is welcomed, but the conditions of participation
specifically preclude any advertising claims based on TAC results.
Track participants must abide by the Policies and
Guidelines for Track Participants.
Data Access and User Agreement Forms
Whenever possible, data that are required for the tracks are
distributed through the track web pages; data are mailed as
physical disks only if they cannot be made available for download.
For most tracks, test (and any training) materials are distributed by NIST
at no cost to track participants. However, some tracks may use
special collections that are only available from other organizations for a
fee; the individual track guidelines will specify instructions for
obtaining such data.
Most data is kept in password-protected areas of the TAC web site.
Password-protected areas include the current year's test data and
evaluation results, and any data that is copyrighted. Access to TAC
2008 data and results is restricted to registered TAC 2008
participants who have submitted all the required User Agreement forms. Each
password-protected area of the web site will indicate which signed
User Agreements are required for access. Each participating team
receives a Team ID and Team Password upon registration. Once the
required User Agreement forms have been received for that team, NIST
activates the Team ID and Password to give access to the
corresponding password-protected web pages.
Track participants should follow the instructions given in the Data User Agreements page for
submitting the "Agreement Concerning Dissemination of TAC Results" and
any additional User Agreements that are required for the particular
tracks of interest. When submitting forms, in addition to the
information requested in the Data User Agreements page,
please include the email address of the main TAC contact
person for the team, and a comment saying that the form is from a TAC 2008
registered participant. NIST needs a signed physical copy of the
agreements before the team can be given any data.
Supplementary Data
Much of the past data from TREC and DUC are available from NIST and
may be useful for system development for some of the TAC tracks. The
data include test topics/judgments (on the TREC and DUC web sites) and document disks.
In addition, various collections of web documents that have been used
in TREC are not available from NIST, but are available for a fee from the
University of Glasgow (see http://ir.dcs.gla.ac.uk/test_collections/).
Beginning March 4, registered TAC participants may request disks
containing entire document collections that might be useful (but are not
required) for some of the tracks. The
document disks that are available from NIST include the TIPSTER set
(disks 1-3), the TREC set (disks 4-5), the AQUAINT set, and the
AQUAINT-2 set. All documents are typical of those seen in a
real-world situation (i.e., there will not be arcane vocabulary, but
there may be missing pieces of text or typographical errors).
Participants should follow the
instructions in the Data User
Agreements page for submitting the "Agreement Concerning
Dissemination of TAC Results" and any additional User Agreements that
are required for the particular disks that are being requested. NIST
will ship the CD-ROMs free of charge to participants who have
returned all required forms. No disks will be shipped before March
4.
Schedule
TAC 2008 Schedule |
March 4 | Deadline for registration for track participation |
Beginning March 4 | Submit signed User Agreements to NIST |
early July - early September | Deadlines for results submission for most tracks |
September 21 | Deadline for workshop presentation proposals |
By early October | Release of individual evaluated results to participants |
October 3 | Deadline for requests for poster slot |
October 7 | Notification of acceptance of presentation proposals |
October 15 | Deadline for TAC 2009 track/task proposals |
October 22 | Deadline for participants' notebook papers, copyright release forms |
November 17-19 | TAC 2008 workshop in Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA |
February 2, 2009 | Deadline for participants' final proceedings papers |