# IAPR TC-11 (Reading Systems) Newsletter ## May, 2020 **Online, phone-friendly version:** [May 2020 Newsletter](http://www.iapr-tc11.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=IAPR_TC11_Newsletter_2020_05) **TC-11:** [TC-11 Homepage](http://www.iapr-tc11.org)    **Twitter:** [iapr_tc11](https://twitter.com/iapr_tc11) ### TABLE OF CONTENTS - Message from the Editor - Dates and Deadlines - Deadlines - Upcoming Conferences and Events - Conferences - ICDAR 2021: 1st Call for Papers - ICDAR 2021: 1st Call for Competitions - Journals - Special Issue on "Recent Advances in Handwritten Text Recognition": Call for Papers - Datasets - TC11 Datasets Repository *(repost)* - Careers - PostDoc Position (LORIA, France, 18 Months) - Student Industrial Internship Opportunities (IAPR) *(repost)* Message from the Editor ======================= As a consequence of the current COVID-19 crisis, we have to expect that several TC11 events this year will be held, at least partly, with remote "virtual" participation. [DAS 2020](https://www.vlrlab.net/das2020/) has decided to become a fully virtual workshop to be held in late July. The exact modalities of [ICFHR 2020](http://www.icfhr2020.org) are under discussion. Please note that the [ICFHR 2020 Competitions](http://icfhr2020.tu-dortmund.de/competitions/) are still open for participation. We hope that next year it will again be possible to meet physically at conferences. The 16th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition ([ICDAR 2021](https://icdar2021.org)) is scheduled for September 5-10, 2021, in Lausanne, Switzerland. In this newsletter, you will find the first call for papers. Note that ICDAR 2021 features long-term competitions with proposals due on June 12th. Furthermore, there will be a special journal track with articles due on November 2nd. Further topics in this newsletter include a call for papers for a special issue on "Recent Advances in Handwritten Text Recognition" and an open postdoc position at LORIA in Nancy, France. **Andreas Fischer, TC11 Communications Officer** ( ) **Join us!** If you are not already a member of the TC11 community, please consider joining the [TC11 mailing list](https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=iapr-tc11&A=1). **Follow us on Twitter (iapr\_tc11):** Dates and Deadlines =================== Deadlines --------- **2020** - **June 12**: Competition proposals (long-term) [ICDAR 2021](https://icdar2021.org) - **July 10**: Paper submission (second round) [ICPR 2020](https://www.micc.unifi.it/icpr2020/) - **November 2**: Article submission (journal track) [ICDAR 2021](https://icdar2021.org) Upcoming Conferences and Events ------------------------------- **2020** - [CVPR2020 Workshop on Text and Documents in the Deep Learning Era](https://cvpr2020text.wordpress.com). Virtual or hybrid (June 15) - [DAS 2020](http://www.vlrlab.net/das2020/). Virtual (late July) - [ICFHR 2020](http://www.icfhr2020.org). Dortmund, Germany (September 8-10) - [ICPRAI 2020](https://users.encs.concordia.ca/~icprai20). Zhongshan, China (postponed, TBA) **2021 and Later** - [ICPR 2020](https://www.micc.unifi.it/icpr2020/). Milan, Italy (January 10-15, 2021) - [ICDAR 2021](https://icdar2021.org). Lausanne, Switzerland (September 5-10, 2021) - **ICFHR 2022**. Hyderabad, India (December, 2022) Conferences =========== ICDAR 2021: 1st Call for Papers ------------------------------- **The 16th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition** *September 5-10, 2021 - Lausanne, Switzerland* Web page: Contact: **Conference** ICDAR is the premier international event for scientists and practitioners involved with document analysis and recognition, a field of growing importance in the current age of digital transition. In 2021, the 16th edition of this flagship conference will be held in Switzerland for the first time. *The organizers are committed to holding a safe and secure ICDAR 2021 in the face of the current worldwide health crisis arising from COVID-19. In the event it becomes necessary, ICDAR 2021 will be held with options for remote "virtual" participation. All accepted papers will be published in the ICDAR 2021 proceedings, whether or not the conference takes place physically.* **Important Dates** *Main Conference* 08 Feb 2021: Paper submission deadline 26 Apr 2021: Notification of acceptance 17 May 2021: Camera-ready version submission deadline 05-07 Sep 2021: Workshops, tutorials, and doctoral consortium 08-10 Sep 2021: Main conference dates *Special Journal Track* 02 Nov 2020: Article submission deadline 11 Jan 2021: Initial decision announced to authors 15 Mar 2021: Revised version submission deadline 31 May 2021: Final decision announced to authors **Topics of interest to the conference include, but are not limited to:** - Document image processing - Physical and logical layout analysis - Text and symbol recognition - Handwriting recognition - Document analysis systems - Document classification - Indexing and retrieval of documents - Document synthesis - Extracting document semantics - NLP for document understanding - Document summarization and translation - Office automation - Human document interaction - Multimedia document analysis - Mobile text recognition - Pen‐based document analysis - Scene text detection and recognition - Graphics recognition - Recognition of tables and formulas - Historical document analysis - Signature verification - Document forensics and provenance analysis - Medical document analysis - Document analysis for social good - Document analysis for literature search - Gold-standard benchmarks and data sets **Submission and Review** ICDAR 2021 will follow a double blind review process. Authors should not include their names and affiliations anywhere in the manuscript. Authors should also ensure that their identity is not revealed indirectly by citing their previous work in the third person, and omit acknowledgements until the camera-ready version. Papers accepted for the conference will be allocated 6 pages in the proceedings, with the option of purchasing up to 2 extra pages. Like in the previous ICDAR edition, we will have a special IJDAR journal track reporting the latest advances of document analysis and recognition on complex documents using advanced techniques. Papers submitted to the journal track should follow the format of [IJDAR submissions and all of the standard guidelines](https://www.springer.com/journal/10032). **Andreas Fischer, Rolf Ingold, and Marcus Liwicki - ICDAR 2021 General Chairs** ( ) PDF version of the 1st Call for Papers: [ICDAR2021-1st-CfP.pdf](https://icdar2021.org/wp-content/uploads/icdar-2021-1st-cfp.pdf) ICDAR 2021: 1st Call for Competitions ------------------------------------- **The 16th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition** *September 5-10, 2021 - Lausanne, Switzerland* Web page: Contact: **Competitions** The ICDAR2021 Organizing Committee invites proposals for Competitions that aim at evaluating the performance of algorithms and methods related to areas of document analysis and recognition. Note that we distinguish between long and short-term competitions, they share the same rules but a different calendar. The long-term competitions should be open for a longer time period and address challenges where teams can work for a year on them. Short-term competitions will be announced later and can address very recent challenges. Furthermore, long competitions will be specially featured through special awards and prominent communication with oral sessions in the main conference. **Important Dates** *Long-Term Competition* - 12 Jun 2020: Proposal Due - 01 Jul 2020: Acceptance Notification *Short-Term Competition* - 04 Sep 2020: Proposal Due - 30 Sep 2020: Acceptance Notification *General* - 31 Mar 2021: Suggested deadline for competition participants - 03 May 2021: Initial Submission of Competition Reports Deadline (Papers must be sent directly to the Competition Chairs) - 31 May 2021: Camera-Ready Papers Due **Proposal** You are cordially invited to submit a proposal, that should contain the following information: - A brief description of the competition **(not more than 1 page)**, including what the particular task under evaluation is and why this competition is of interest to the ICDAR community. - A draft of the outline of the competition describing competition schedule, the expected number of participants and its rationale, which data is planned to be used, how will the submitted methods be evaluated and which performance measures will be used. - The names, contact information, and brief CVs of the competition organizers, outlining previous experience in performance evaluation and/or organizing competitions. **The following rules shall apply to the accepted competition:** - The name of the competition must be standardized by starting with "ICDAR 2021" e.g. "ICDAR 2021 Competition on ..." or "ICDAR 2021 ... Competition." - Datasets used in the competitions must be made available after the end of the competitions. If the competition has already occured, the previous dataset should already be available. In principle, the organizers should submit the dataset to - Evaluation methodologies and metrics used must be described in detail so that results can be replicated later. Especially for the long-term competitions, it is preferable that the evaluation methodologies are open source and can be easily accessible from the participants but also from the research community. - Participants should not have access to the ground-truthed dataset until the end of the competition, the evaluation should be done by the organizers. - The basic length of reports of the competitions is the same as for the regular paper (i.e., 6 pages). If there are circumstances to be considered, upon request, Competition Chairs may allow additional pages for the competitions reports, if necessary. - The results of competitions will be announced during a dedicated session of the ICDAR 2021 conference. - Each competition has to be presented with a poster at a prominent place at the conference venue. All accepted long-term competitions will be presented orally in a dedicated session as mentioned above. Based on the analysis of the received proposals, the competitions chairs will first synchronize with the competitions organizers and then submit a proposal to the program committee, in order to finalize the organization of the competitions. **Submission Guidelines & Inquiries** All proposals should be submitted by electronic mail to the Competition Chairs via: Note that we opt at accepting a significantly lower number of competitions than in the past. We encourage that competitions are open for a longer time (long-term). For any inquiries you may have regarding the competitions, please contact us via above email. **Foteini Liwicki and Harold Mouchère - ICDAR 2021 Competitions Chairs** () PDF version of the 1st Call for Competitions: [ICDAR2021-1st-CfC.pdf](https://icdar2021.org/wp-content/uploads/icdar-2021-1st-cfc.pdf) Journals ======== Special Issue on "Recent Advances in Handwritten Text Recognition": Call for Papers ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Special issue in *Applied Sciences* open access journal by MDPI (open access fees apply). Web page: **Important Dates** Jun 30, 2020 Deadline for manuscript submissions In the last two decades, the progress in handwritten text processing has allowed us to increment the performance of the systems devoted to the transcription, indexing, and semantic interpretation of handwritten text documents. The progress has covered all the steps in this field, from image capture and enhancement to information extraction based on the contents of the documents. As a result, lots of data that were difficult to process from the natural language perspective have became available for specialized researchers and the general public, especially when dealing with the contents of historical archives. The aim of this Special Issue is to attract world-leading researchers in the handwritten text processing field in an effort to show recent progress in the area, including the development of new paradigms and models and new applications of the state-of-the-art technology. **Manuscript Submission Information** Details on the manuscript submission are available at . Please note that there is a substantial fee for open access publication. **Special Issue Editors** - Dr. Carlos-D. Martínez Hinarejos, Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain, - Dr. Byron Leite Dantas Bezerra, Universidade de Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil, - Dr. Donato Impedovo, University of Bari, Italy, Datasets ======== TC11 Datasets Repository *(repost)* ----------------------------------- TC11 maintains a collection of datasets that can be found online in the [TC11 Datasets Repository](http://www.iapr-tc11.org/mediawiki/index.php/Datasets). If you have new datasets (e.g., from competitions) that you wish to share with the research community, please use the [online upload form](http://tc11.cvc.uab.es/upload/). For questions and support, please contact the TC11 Dataset Curator (contact information is below). **Joseph Chazalon (TC11 Dataset Curator)** ( ) Careers ======= PostDoc Position (LORIA, France, 18 Months) ------------------------------------------- **Title:** Information extraction from scanned images for consumption analysis on the out-of-home market **Period:** May 1, 2020 to October 30, 2021 (18 months) **Contact:** For more details on this position, please contact Prof. Abdel Belaïd, LORIA, READ Team, France, Student Industrial Internship Opportunities (IAPR) *(repost)* ------------------------------------------------------------- [IAPR's Industrial Liaison Committee](http://www.iapr.org/committees/committees.php?id=5&subid=53) is pleased to announce the opening of its Company Internship Brokerage List. The web page lists internship opportunities for students at different levels of education and specialism. We expect many additional internship opportunities to be listed here as the community becomes more aware of the site. IAPR Company Internship Brokerage List: **Bob Fisher, Chair, IAPR Industrial Liason Committee** ( ) Contributions and Subscriptions ================================== **Call for Contributions:** To contribute news items, please send a short email to the editor, [Andreas Fischer](mailto:andreas.fischer@hefr.ch). Contributions might include conference and workshop announcements or reports, career opportunities, book reviews, or anything else of interest to the TC11 community. **Subscription:** This newsletter is sent to subscribers of the IAPR TC11 mailing list. To join the TC11 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 TC11 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 (TC11) includes researchers and practitioners working with Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and more generally the analysis and recognition of information in documents.