[Corpora-List] ACL04 Workshop: Question Answering in Restricted Domains

From: Diego Molla (diego@ics.mq.edu.au)
Date: Mon Mar 08 2004 - 01:23:24 MET

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                      LAST CALL FOR PAPERS

    ACL04 WORKSHOP ON QUESTION ANSWERING IN RESTRICTED DOMAINS
                Barcelona, Spain, 25-26 July 2004
                Submission deadline: 15 March 2004
        http://www.clt.mq.edu.au/Events/Conferences/acl04qa/

    Much of the current research in question answering systems is driven
    by programs such as AQUAINT and evaluation exercises such as TREC,
    NTCIR and CLEF, all of which focus on open-domain question
    answering. The availability of large volumes of data (e.g. documents
    extracted from the World Wide Web) has prompted the development of
    systems that focus on shallow text processing.

    But there are many document sets in restricted domains that are
    potentially valuable as a source for question answering systems. For
    example, the documentation pages of Unix and Linux systems would make
    an ideal corpus for QA systems targeted at users that want to know how
    to use these operating systems. There is a wealth of information in
    other technical documentation such as software manuals, car
    maintenance manuals, and encyclopediae of specific areas such as
    medicine. Users interested in these specific areas would benefit from
    QA systems targeted to their areas of interest.

    Restricted domains typically have limited data available and therefore
    conventional techniques based on data redundancy can simply not be
    applied in an effective way. The scarcity of data available seems to
    prompt for a more targeted, NLP-intensive approach to QA. The use of
    additional corpora such as the WWW raises a number of interesting
    questions. For instance, will these corpora help or obstruct the
    proper functioning of an NLP-intensive approach to QA? And, how do we
    find good pockets of information that are appropriate to the chosen
    domains?

    On the other hand, restricted domains (e.g. law, medicine) have
    specific stylistic conventions. Often these domains use terminology
    that is not stored in conventional lexica. Consequently NLP approaches
    devised for open-domain systems may under-perform on these specific
    domains, thus raising the question of how portable these systems can
    be.

    In this workshop we aim at answering some of the following questions:

    * Are open-domain question answering techniques appropriate for QA in
       restricted domains?

    * Can we use generic large corpora and/or the WWW? How can we identify
       specific pockets of information in these generic corpora?

    * How can we use specific sources such as the CIA factbook, acronym
       lists, e-commerce sites (e.g. e-bay), and specialized glossaries and
       encyclopedia? How can we discover new specific sources?

    * What types of question-answering techniques are best for what types
       of restricted domains?

    * Is it easy/possible/worthwhile to develop domain-independent QA
       systems for restricted domains? What would be the cost of porting a
       QA system to a specific domain?

    * Are restricted domains more suitable than open domains to drive
       research in NLP?

    * Is evaluation of restricted-domain QA systems different than that of
       open-domain QA systems?

    We welcome papers that address any of the above questions or that
    focus on any of the following topics:

    * Comparison between open-domain and restricted-domain QA

    * Characterisation of the types of restricted domains and the
       technology required for QA on those domains

    * Methodologies and/or tools for restricted-domain QA

    * Description of specific restricted-domain QA systems

    * Development of modules (e.g. document preselection, NE extraction,
       terminology extraction) for use in restricted-domain QA systems

    * Portability of QA systems between different restricted domains

    * Evaluation of restricted-domain QA systems

    SUBMISSION PROCEDURE

    Authors should submit full papers of maximum 8 pages, including
    references and figures, following the main conference ACL style format
    (http://www.acl2004.org/aclstyles/style.html). The review will not be
    blind. Submissions must be in PS or PDF format and they should be sent
    to diego@ics.mq.edu.au

    PROGRAM COMMITTEE

    Organizers:
    -----------

    Diego Mollá Macquarie University, Australia
    José Luis Vicedo Alicante University, Spain

    Committee:
    ----------

    In alphabetical order by first name:

    Anselmo Peñas UNED, Spain
    Antonio Ferrández Alicante University, Spain
    Bernardo Magnini ITC-Irst, Italy
    Bonnie Webber University of Edinburgh, UK
    Donna Harman NIST, USA
    Ellen Voorhees NIST, USA
    Fabio Rinaldi University of Zurich, Switzerland
    Felisa Verdejo UNED, Spain
    Graeme Hirst University of Toronto, Canada
    Horacio Rodríguez Universitat de Catalunya, Spain
    Ingrid Zukerman Monash University, Australia
    Jimmy Lin MIT, USA
    Johan Bos University of Edinburgh, UK
    Juergen Franke DaimlerChrysler AG, Germany
    Julio Gonzalo UNED, Spain
    Lynette Hirschman MITRE, USA
    Maarten de Rijke University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
    Manuel Palomar Alicante University, Spain
    Mark Maybury MITRE, USA
    Michael Hess University of Zurich, Switzerland
    Pierre Zweigenbaum DIAM, France
    Richard Sutcliffe University of Limerick, Ireland
    Rolf Schwitter Macquarie University, Australia
    Sanda Harabagiu University of Texas, USA

    IMPORTANT DATES

    * 15 March 04 Paper submission
    * 15 April 04 Notification of acceptance
    * 15 May 04 Camera ready version
    * 25 or 26 July 04 Workshop (final date not yet determined)

    CONTACT DETAILS

    Diego Mollá
    Centre for Language Technology
    Division of Information and Communication Sciences
    Macquarie University
    New South Wales 2109
    Australia

    Tel. +61 2 9850 9531
    Fax +61 2 9850 9551
    diego@ics.mq.edu.au



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