IAPR TC-11 (READING SYSTEMS) NEWSLETTER August, 2017 ======================================================================== IAPR TC-11 HOMEPAGE: Online Version: TABLE OF CONTENTS: - Message from the Editor - Dates and Deadlines - Deadlines - Upcoming Conference Dates - IAPR/ICDAR 2017 Awards - IAPR/ICDAR Outstanding Achievements Award - IAPR/ICDAR Young Investigator Award - New Datasets (repost) - ICDAR 2017 - ICDAR Doctoral Consortium: Deadline Extension (repost) - Call for Participation: The Workshop for the Future of Document Analysis and Recognition - Call for Papers: 4th International Workshop on Historical Document Imaging and Processing - HIP 2017 (repost) - ICDAR 2017: Workshops List - ICDAR 2017: Competitions List - DAS 2018 - Call for Papers: DAS 2018 (repost) - Journals: IJDAR - New Issue: IJDAR Vol. 20, Issue 3 (Sept. 2017) - IJDAR Special Issue:
*Deep Learning for Document Analysis and Recognition* (Deadline Extended to September 30) - IJDAR Discount for IAPR Members (repost) Message from the Editor ======================= In this edition of the TC11 newsletter, we have updates regarding ICDAR 2017 and a deadline extension for the IJDAR Special Issue on *Deep Learning for Document Analysis and Recognition.* We are also very pleased to announce the recipients of the IAPR/ICDAR 2017 Awards. We briefly summarize these and other highlights for this month below. **IJDAR 'Deep Learning' Special Issue: Deadline Extension.** The submission deadline for the IJDAR special issue on Deep Learning in Document Recognition has been extended to Sept. 30th. **ICDAR 2017** - **IAPR/ICDAR Awards.** Congratulations to our IAPR/ICDAR 2017 Award winners, **Prof. Rangachar Kasturi** (IAPR/ICDAR Outstanding Achievements Award) and **Dr. Alicia Fornés** (IAPR/ICDAR Young Investigator Award). The citations for their awards may be found elsewhere in this newsletter. We also congratulate the 21 students who received an [ICDAR 2017 Student Travel Award](http://u-pat.org/ICDAR2017/attend_financial_assistance.php). - **Program and Keynote Speakers.** The program for ICDAR is now available [online](http://u-pat.org/ICDAR2017/program_main.php). The [keynote speakers](http://u-pat.org/ICDAR2017/program_keynote.php) will be Prof. Rangachar Kasturi (recipient of the *IAPR/ICDAR 2017 Outstanding Achievements Award*), Prof. Andreas Dengel, and Prof. Xiang Bai. - **Doctoral Consortium.** The submission deadline for the ICDAR Doctoral Consortium is nearly upon us: September 1st ([Submission Instructions](http://u-pat.org/ICDAR2017/call_for_dc.html)). Please take a moment and seriously consider applying if you are a PhD student at the appropriate stage in your studies, as this is a valuable learning and networking opportunity. - **Workshops, Competitions, and Tutorials.** Lists of ICDAR workshops and competitions are provided in this newsletter, along with a Call for Papers from the Historical Document Image Processing Workshop (HIP). Information about tutorials at ICDAR may be found online ([ICDAR Tutorials](http://u-pat.org/ICDAR2017/program_tutorials.html)). If you are going to ICDAR, please consider attending the special workshop on the future of Document Analysis and Recognition research that will be free of charge. **Upcoming Conferences.** Please have a look at the Calls for Papers for upcoming conferences including DAS 2018 (Vienna), ICPRAI 2018 (Montreal), ICPR 2018 (Beijing), and ICFHR 2018 (Niagara Falls). **Join us!** If you are not already a member of the TC-11 community, please consider joining the [TC11 mailing list](https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=iapr-tc11&A=1). **Richard Zanibbi, TC-11 Communications Officer** () Dates and Deadlines =================== Deadlines --------- **2017** - **Sept. 1**: ICDAR Doctoral Consortium Deadline ([Submission Instructions](http://u-pat.org/ICDAR2017/call_for_dc.html)) - **Sept. 30:** IJDAR Special Issue: *Deep Learning for Document Analysis and Recognition* ([Call for Papers](http://www.springer.com/cda/content/document/cda_downloaddocument/Special+Issue+on+Deep+Learning+for+DAR.pdf?SGWID=0-0-45-1600550-p1122349)) - **Nov. 15:** ICPRAI 2018 Paper Submission ([Call for Papers](http://users.encs.concordia.ca/~icprai18/index.html)) - **Nov. 20:** DAS 2018 Paper Submission ([Call for Papers](https://das2018.caa.tuwien.ac.at/media/filer_public/9f/2e/9f2e9653-b73f-4899-902e-3dfa4109d744/cfp.pdf)) - **Dec. 15:** ICPR Workshop Proposal Deadline ([Call for Proposals](http://www.icpr2018.org/index.php?m=content&c=index&a=show&catid=10&id=28)) and Tutorial Proposal Deadline ([Call for Proposals](http://www.icpr2018.org/index.php?m=content&c=index&a=show&catid=10&id=29)) **2018** - **Jan. 5:** ICPR Paper Submission ([Call for Papers](http://www.icpr2018.org/index.php?m=content&c=index&a=lists&catid=15)) - **Jan. 19:** DAS 2018 Short Paper Submission ([Call for Papers](https://das2018.caa.tuwien.ac.at/media/filer_public/9f/2e/9f2e9653-b73f-4899-902e-3dfa4109d744/cfp.pdf)) - **Mar. 2:** ICFHR 2018 Submissions ([Call for Papers](http://www.cs.rit.edu/~icfhr2018/call.html)) Upcoming Conference Dates ------------------------- - [ICDAR 2017](http://u-pat.org/ICDAR2017). Kyoto, Japan (Nov. 9-15, 2017) - [DAS 2018](https://das2018.caa.tuwien.ac.at). Vienna, Austria (24-27 April, 2018) - [ICPRAI 2018](http://icprai2018.com/). Montreal, Canada (May 14-17, 2018) - [ICFHR 2018](https://www.cs.rit.edu/~icfhr2018). Niagara Falls, USA (August 5-8, 2018) - ICPR 2018, Beijing, China (August 20-24, 2018) - ICDAR 2019, Brisbane, Australia (September 22-25, 2019) - ICFHR 2020. Dortmund, Germany (September 8-10, 2020) IAPR/ICDAR 2017 Awards ====================== **Online Announcement (with recipient biographies)**: We are pleased to announce the recipients of this year's IAPR/ICDAR Awards. The awards ceremony will be held during ICDAR 2017 in Kyoto, Japan. IAPR/ICDAR Outstanding Achievements Award ----------------------------------------- **Prof. Rangachar Kasturi** for seminal research in document image analysis and graphics recognition shaping the evolution of the document image analysis field, and for outstanding leadership to both the ICDAR and the wider international pattern recognition community. Prof. Kasturi will deliver the Opening Keynote Speech at ICDAR2017. *IAPR / ICDAR Outstanding Achievements Award Committee:* Dan Lopresti Jean-Marc Ogier Josep Llados Simone Marinai Cheng-Lin Liu Marcus Liwicki Venu Govindaraju Bart Lamiroy Dimosthenis Karatzas IAPR/ICDAR Young Investigator Award ----------------------------------- **Dr. Alicia Fornés** for outstanding contributions in the recognition of handwriting, text and graphics, with high impact to the field of Digital Humanities, and her service to the IAPR Technical Committee on Graphics Recognition. *IAPR / ICDAR Young Investigator Award Committee:* Dan Lopresti Simone Marinai Cheng-Lin Liu Marcus Liwicki Venu Govindaraju New Datasets (repost) ===================== The following new datasets that were recently released: - [CROHME 2016: Handwritten math recognition dataset and evaluation tools](http://tc11.cvc.uab.es/datasets/ICFHR-CROHME-2016_1) - [HANDS - Vietnamese Online Handwriting Database HANDS-VNOnDB (TUAT Nakagawa Lab)](http://tc11.cvc.uab.es/datasets/HANDS-VNOnDB_1) These and many other datasets may be found online in the [TC-11 Datasets Repository](http://www.iapr-tc11.org/mediawiki/index.php/Datasets). **Andreas Fischer (TC-11 Dataset Curator)** () ICDAR 2017 ========== ICDAR Doctoral Consortium: Deadline Extension (repost) ------------------------------------------------------ Important Dates ** Submission Deadline: September 1, 2007 ** Acceptance Notification: September 15, 2017 Final Materials Due: October 15, 2017 Date of Doctoral Consortium: November 12, 2017 **Web Page:** ICDAR 2017 is providing a Doctoral Consortium for PhD Students. The Consortium will run on Sunday November 12, the day before the ICDAR main conference. The goal of the Consortium is to create an opportunity for Ph.D. students to test their research ideas, present their current progress and future plans, and receive constructive criticism and insights related to their future work and career perspectives. A mentor (a senior researcher who is active in the field) will be assigned to each student to provide individual feedback. In addition, students will have the opportunity to present an overview of their research plan during a special poster session. If you are Ph.D. student planning to attend ICDAR 2017, we would like to invite you to join the Doctoral Consortium. If you are supervisor of PhD students, we encourage you to speak with your Ph.D students about the event and invite them to participate. Scheduled activities in the DC will be beneficial for both of you: suggestions that the students will receive from mentors will be beneficial for the Ph.D work and their research plan and will also be opportunities to develop new ideas for future work. Participation in the Doctoral Consortium will be free of charge for all accepted students who are registered for ICDAR, and affordable hotel options are also included at the time of registration. Thank you in advance for participating. **Véronique Eglin and Rafael Dueire Lins, DC - Organizers** (, ) Call for Participation: The Workshop for the Future of Document Analysis and Recognition ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Important Dates Nov. 12, 14:30-18:30: Workshop (co-located with ICDAR 2017) **Website:** In cooperation with the Institute of Document Analysis and Knowledge Science (IDAKS), Osaka Prefecture University Kyoto Terrsa, Kyoto, Japan **Workshop Chairs** Koichi Kise, Osaka Prefecture University, Japan Andreas Dengel, DFKI, Germany **Objectives** Let's discuss the future of document analysis and recognition. In the history of ICDAR in the last 26 years, we have been working in a variety of fields of document analysis and recognition, and have solved many important problems. The emergence of machine learning technologies, however, has shifted the nature of unsolved problems. For example, improving accuracy of methods for existing problems attracts less researchers. This brings us to the following questions: What are exciting open problems that interest more researchers? What are research topics young researchers and outsiders of the ICDAR community cannot help joining us? This workshop is planned to discuss possible research topics and open problems to start new chapters of research on document analysis and recognition. **Workshop Format** The purpose of the workshop is to have deeper discussions about the future of document analysis and recognition. For stimulating the discussion, we have short presentation by invited speakers listed below to share their views of the future. After the presentation, we select some representative topics for discussion. Then participants and invited speakers are divided into some groups of selected topics for discussion. The results of discussion will be summarized at the end of the workshop and final results will be presented at the main conference. We plan to have a short summary presentation at the banquet and more detailed presentation and discussion at the panel on the last day of the conference. **Invited Speakers** Apostolos Antonacopoulos Michael Blumenstein Andreas Dengel Dimosthenis Karatzas Koichi Kise C. V. Jawahar Bart Lamiroy Cheng-Lin Liu Marcus Liwicki Josep Llados Dan Lopresti Simone Marinai Jean-Marc Ogier Seiichi Uchida **Program** - 14:30-14:40 Opening - 14:40-15:50 Position paper presentation (5 min/invited speaker) - 15:50-16:20 Coffee break - 16:20-16:30 Discussion group formation (about 4 groups) - 16:30-17:50 Discussion (each group) - 17:50-18:30 Wrap-up (5 min/group + summary) Looking forward to meeting you at the workshop!! **Koichi Kise, Workshop Co-Chair** () Call for Papers: 4th International Workshop on Historical Document Imaging and Processing - HIP 2017 (repost) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Important Dates ** September 1, 2017: Paper submission ** October 6, 2017: Notification of acceptance October 20, 2017: Camera-ready paper November 10-11, 2017: Workshop (in conjunction with ICDAR 2017) Website (Call for Papers PDF available on the webpage) Dear Colleagues, It is our pleasure to announce that the 4th International Workshop on Historical Document Imaging and Processing (HIP 2017) will be held in conjunction with ICDAR 2017, on November 10-11, 2017 in Kyoto TERRSA, Japan. It will be a 1.5-days event, with sessions on the first day and a half-day excursion on the second. Note that early-bird registration fees will apply to authors of accepted HIP papers until October 9. After that, only onsite registration is possible. The workshop brings together researchers working with historical documents and is intended to be complementary and synergistic to the work in analysis and recognition featured in the main sessions of ICDAR, the premier international forum for researchers and practitioners in the document analysis community. Workshop topics include (but are not limited to): - Imaging and Image Acquisition - Digital Archiving Considerations - Document Restoration and Improving Readability of Documents - Content Extraction (in the Context of Historical Documents) - Family History Documents and Genealogies - Automated Classification, Grouping and Hyperlinking of Historical Documents We invite you to submit your recent work to HIP 2017. Accepted papers will become part of the ACM Digital Library. Papers must not exceed **6 pages** in length. Authors should use the current ACM SIG Conference Proceedings Template to prepare their papers. Best regards from the Workshop Chairs, Andreas Fischer (University of Fribourg, Switzerland) Angelika Garz (University of Fribourg, Switzerland) Kengo Terasawa (Future University Hakodate, Japan) Bill Barrett (Brigham Young University, USA) For further inquiries, please contact us via . **Andreas Fischer, Workshop Co-Chair** () ICDAR 2017: Workshops List -------------------------- Nine workshops will be offered at ICDAR 2017. Please see below a list of these Workshops and the names of the corresponding organizers. Web pages for each workshop may be found online: . **HDI: First International Workshop on Human-Document Interaction** Organizers: Jean-Christophe Burie, Mickaël Coustaty, Dimosthenis Karatzas and Koichi Kise **CBDAR: 7th International Workshop on Camera-Based Document Analysis and Recognition** Organizers: Lluis Gomez-Bigorda, Muhammad Muzzamil Luqman and Dimosthenis Karatzas **MANPU: 2nd International Workshop on coMics Analysis, Processing and Understanding** Organizers: Jean-Christophe Burie, Toshihiko Yamasaki and Motoi Iwata **ICDAR-WML: Workshop on Machine Learning** Organizers: Umapada Pal and Eric Granger **HIP: 4th International Workshop on Historical Document Imaging and Processing** Organizers: Andreas Fischer, Angelika Garz, Kengo Terasawa and Bill Barrett **IWCDF: 1st International Workshop on Computational Document Forensics** Organizers: Jean-Marc Ogier, Utpal Garain and Apostolos Antonacopoulos **ICDAR-OST: 1st International Workshop on Open Services and Tools for Document Analysis** Organizers: Marcel Würsch and Joseph Chazalon **GREC: 12th International Workshop on Graphics Recognition** Organizers: Alicia Fornés and Bart Lamiroy **MOCR: 6th International Workshop on Multilingual OCR** Organizers: Venu Govindaraju, Prem Natarajan, Santanu Chaudhury and Srirangaraj Setlur We are looking forward to your submissions for these Workshops. We also solicit your gracious support in circulating this information among your students, colleagues and scientific/research community to give it higher visibility. **Michael Blumenstein & Umapada Pal, ICDAR-2017 Workshop Co-Chairs** (, ) ICDAR 2017: Competitions List ----------------------------- HANDWRITTEN HISTORICAL DOCUMENT LAYOUT RECOGNITION - Competition on Baseline Detection in Archival Documents: - Competition on Layout Analysis for Challenging Medieval Manuscripts: - Competition on Historical Book Analysis: HISTORICAL HANDWRITTEN SCRIPT ANALYSIS - Competition on the Classification of Medieval Handwritings in Latin Script: - Competition on Historical Document Writer Identification: - Competition on Multi-script Writer Identification Using LAMIS-MSHD and CERUG Databases: CHARACTER/WORD SPOTTING - Competition on Query-by-Example Glyph Spotting of Southeast Asian Palm Leaf Manuscript Images: - Handwritten Keyword Spotting Competition: HANDWRITING RECOGNITION - Competition on Handwritten Text Recognition on the READ Dataset: - Competition on Information Extraction in Historical Handwritten Records: DOCUMENT IMAGE BINARIZATION - Document Image Binarization Competition: DOCUMENT RECOGNITION (LAYOUT ANALYSIS & TEXT RECOGNITION) - Competition on Recognition of Documents with Complex Layouts: - Competition on Early Indian Printed Documents: - Competition on Page Object Detection in Document Images: DOCUMENT DOCUMENT RECONSTRUCTION - Smartphone-captured Document Image Reconstruction from Multiple Views: POST OCR CORRECTION - Competition on Post-OCR Text Correction: ROBUST READING COMPETITIONS - Competition on Reading Chinese Text in the Wild: - Challenge on COCO-Text: - Challenge on Text Extraction from Biomedical Literature Figures: - Challenge on Robust Reading Challenge on Omnidirectional Video: - Competition on Multi-lingual scene text detection and script identification: TEXT IN VIDEO - Competition on Arabic Text Detection and Recognition in Multiresolution Video Frames (AcTiVComp17) - Competition on Video Script Identification: http://[www.ict.griffith.edu.au/cvsi2017](www.ict.griffith.edu.au/cvsi2017) FORENSICS - Competition on File Type and Altered Image Identification: MISCELLANEOUS COMPETITIONS - Competition on Multi-font and Multi-size Digitally Represented Arabic Text: DAS 2018 ======== Call for Papers: DAS 2018 (repost) ---------------------------------- **13th IAPR International Workshop on Document Analysis Systems (DAS 2018)** *April 24-27 2018, Vienna, Austria* **Important Dates** Full papers due: Nov. 20, 2017 * Decision notification: Jan. 15, 2018 Short papers due: Jan. 19, 2018 * Decision notification: Jan. 31, 2018 Tutorial proposals due: Nov. 30, 2017 **Overview.** DAS 2018 is the 13th edition of the 100% participation single-track IAPR sponsored workshop focusing on system-level issues and approaches in document analysis and recognition. The workshop comprises invited speaker presentations, oral, poster, tutorial and demo sessions as well as working group discussions. DAS 2018 will be organized at TU Wien (Vienna University of Technology), in the heart of Vienna’s city center, which places the attendees within walking distance to a large variety of world-famous historical and cultural attractions. The program will include long and short papers, posters and demonstrations of working or prototype systems. All submissions will undergo a rigorous review process with a minimum of 3 reviews considering the originality of work, the quality of research or analysis of experience, the relevance to document analysis systems, and quality of presentation. Information regarding paper submissions is provided below. **Note:** Submission of a paper involves a commitment that, if accepted, one or more authors will attend the workshop. **Full Papers.** Full papers should describe complete works of original research. Authors are invited to submit original, unpublished research papers that are not being considered in another form, up to 6 pages length. **Short Papers.** Short papers provide an opportunity to report on research in progress and to present novel positions on document analysis systems. Authors may submit short papers (up to 2 pages in length). Short papers will also undergo review and will appear in an extra booklet, not in the official DAS 2018 proceedings. **Demonstrations.** DAS 2018 seeks public demonstrations of novel systems, to be presented to the workshop as a whole during breaks between paper sessions. Prospective demonstrators should submit a two-page summary of the system to be demonstrated. Demonstration proposals will undergo review and summaries of accepted demonstrations will appear in the extra DAS 2018 booklet, as in the case of short papers. For Topics & Technologies and Commitees, please see the DAS 2018 website: **Contact:** **Robert Sablatnig and Florian Kleber, DAS 2018 General Chairs** (, ) Journals: IJDAR =============== New Issue: IJDAR Vol. 20, Issue 3 (Sept. 2017) ---------------------------------------------- **Table of Contents** [A multi-one-class dynamic classifier for adaptive digitization of document streams](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10032-017-0286-6) Anh Khoi Ngo Ho, Véronique Eglin, Nicolas Ragot & Jean-Yves Ramel [A sigma-lognormal model-based approach to generating large synthetic online handwriting sample databases](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10032-017-0287-5) Ujjwal Bhattacharya, Réjean Plamondon, Souvik Dutta Chowdhury, Pankaj Goyal & Swapan K. Parui [On writer identification for Arabic historical manuscripts](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10032-017-0289-3) Abedelkadir Asi, Alaa Abdalhaleem, Daniel Fecker, Volker Märgner & Jihad El-Sana [Post-processing coding artifacts for JPEG documents](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10032-017-0288-4) The-Anh Pham & Mathieu Delalandre [Mean-Shift segmentation and PDE-based nonlinear diffusion: toward a common variational framework for foreground/background document image segmentation](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10032-017-0285-7) Fadoua Drira & Frank LeBourgeois IJDAR Special Issue:
*Deep Learning for Document Analysis and Recognition* (Deadline Extended to September 30) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In recent years, applying Deep Learning techniques to Document Analysis and Recognition (DAR) tasks has produced significant performance gains. These have included impressive advances in handwriting recognition, word-spotting in document images, document segmentation, and text detection in natural scenes. This special issue aims to report new advances in DAR using deep learning methods. Articles presenting reviews, perspectives, new methods and applications in DAR are cordially invited. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to uses of Deep Learning for: - Document image processing and segmentation - Layout analysis - Character and text recognition - Scene text detection and recognition - Writer identification and signature analysis - Document retrieval - Context modeling - Graphics and symbol recognition - Other DAR tasks Paper submissions are due **September 30, 2017**. For further information, please see the [Call for Submissions.](http://www.springer.com/cda/content/document/cda_downloaddocument/Special+Issue+on+Deep+Learning+for+DAR.pdf?SGWID=0-0-45-1600550-p1122349) **Cheng-Lin Liu, Gernot A. Fink, Venu Govindarajum, Lianwen Jin  (Guest Editors)** ( , , , ) **Koichi Kise, Daniel Lopresti and Simone Marinai (IJDAR Editors-in-Chief)** ( , , ) IJDAR Discount for IAPR Members (repost) ---------------------------------------- IAPR is pleased to announce a partnership agreement with Springer, the publisher of IJDAR, the International Journal on Document Analysis and Recognition. This new agreement will allow IAPR members to receive a subscription to the electronic version of IJDAR at a discount of nearly 50%. For additional details, see the links below: - - [http://www.iapr.org/publications/intjrnlsub.php](http://www.iapr.org/publications/intjournal.php) **Koichi Kise, Daniel Lopresti and Simone Marinai, IJDAR Editors-in-Chief** ( , , ) Contributions and Subscriptions ================================== **Call for Contributions:** To contribute news items, please send a short email to the editor, [Richard Zanibbi](mailto:rxzvcs@cs.rit.edu). Contributions might include conference and workshop announcements or reports, career opportunities, book reviews, or anything else of interest to the TC-11 community. **Subscription:** This newsletter is sent to subscribers of the IAPR TC11 mailing list. To join the TC-11 mailing list, please click on [this link](https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=iapr-tc11&A=1). To manage your subscription, please visit the [mailing list homepage](https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=IAPR-TC11). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ IAPR TC-11 HOMEPAGE: [http://www.iapr-tc11.org](http://www.iapr-tc11.org) The IAPR is the International Association for Pattern Recognition. IAPR's Technical Committee No. 11 (TC-11) includes researchers and practitioners working with Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and more generally the analysis and recognition of information in documents.