Text Analysis Conference (TAC 2010)

INTRODUCTION

The Text Analysis Conference (TAC) is a series of evaluation workshops organized to encourage research in Natural Language Processing and related applications, by providing a large test collection, common evaluation procedures, and a forum for organizations to share their results. TAC comprises sets of tasks known as "tracks," each of which focuses on a particular subproblem of NLP. TAC tracks focus on end-user tasks, but also include component evaluations situated within the context of end-user tasks.

You are invited to participate in TAC 2010. NIST will provide test data for each track, and track participants will run their NLP systems on the data and return their results to NIST for evaluation. Organizations may choose to participate in any or all of the tracks. The annual conference culminates in a November workshop at NIST in Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA. All results submitted to NIST are archived on the TAC web site, and all evaluations of submitted results are included in the 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.

TRACKS

TAC 2010 has three tracks:

• Knowledge Base Population (KBP)
  Track Coordinators: Heng Ji (hengji@cs.qc.cuny.edu) and Ralph Grishman (grishman@cs.nyu.edu)
  Web page: http://nlp.cs.qc.cuny.edu/kbp/2010/ (archived here)
  Mailing list: tac-kbp@nist.gov
  
• Recognizing Textual Entailment (RTE)
  Track Coordinators: Danilo Giampiccolo (giampiccolo@celct.it) and Luisa Bentivogli (bentivo@fbk.eu)
  Web page: http://tac.nist.gov/2010/RTE/
  Mailing list: rte@nist.gov
  
• Summarization
  Track Coordinators: Karolina Owczarzak (karolina.owczarzak@nist.gov) and Hoa Trang Dang (hoa.dang@nist.gov)
  Web page: http://tac.nist.gov/2010/Summarization/
  Mailing list: duc_list@nist.gov
  

The exact definition of the tasks to be performed in each TAC 2010 track is formulated and discussed on the track mailing list. To be added to a track mailing list, follow the instructions given in the track web page for contacting the mailing list. For questions about the track, send mail to the track coordinator (or post the question to the track mailing list once you join).

TRACK REGISTRATION

Organizations wishing to participate in any of the TAC 2010 tracks are invited to register online by May 21, 2010. Registration for a track does not commit you to participating in the track, but is helpful to know for planning. Late registration will be permitted only if resources allow. Any questions about conference participation may be sent to the TAC project manager: tac-manager@nist.gov.

• Track Registration Form

WORKSHOP

The TAC 2010 workshop will be held November 15-16, 2010, in Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA, and is co-located with the meeting of the Nineteenth Text REtrieval Conference (TREC 2010). The TAC workshop is a forum both for presentation of results (including failure analyses and system comparisons), and for more lengthy system presentations describing techniques used, experiments run on the data, and other issues of interest to researchers in NLP. Track participants who want to give a presentation during the workshop will submit a 500-word abstract in September describing the experiments they performed. As there is a limited amount of time for oral presentations, the TAC advisory committee will use the abstracts to determine which participants are asked to speak and which will present in a poster session.

SCHEDULE

TAC 2010 Schedule
May 21	Deadline for track registration
July - early September	Deadlines for results submission
September 26	Deadline for workshop presentation proposals
By early October	Release of individual evaluated results to participants
October 27	Deadline for participants' workshop notebook papers
November 15-16	TAC 2010 workshop in Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA
early February 2011	Deadline for participants' final proceedings papers