View source for IAPR-TC11: Newsletter 2018/09

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 [[Image:IAPR_logo.gif‎|100px]] [[Image:Tc-11_Logo_v2_72dpi.png|140px]]
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==  September, 2017 ==
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* Message from the Editor
* Dates and Deadlines
** Deadlines
** Upcoming Conference Dates
* IAPR/ICDAR 2017 Awards (repost)
** IAPR/ICDAR Outstanding Achievements Award
** IAPR/ICDAR Young Investigator Award
* ICDAR 2017
** Call for Participation: The Workshop for the Future of Document Analysis and Recognition (repost)
** ICDAR 2017: Workshops List 
** ICDAR 2017: Competitions List 
* DAS 2018: Call for Papers (repost)
* ICFHR 2018
** ICFHR 2018: Call for Papers
** ICFHR 2018: Call for Competitions
* IEEE ASAR 2018: Call for Papers
* ICPRAI 2018: Celebrating 30 Years of CENPARMI 
* Journals
** New Issue: IJDAR Vol. 20, Issue 3 (Sept. 2017 - repost)
** IJDAR Special Issue Deep Learning for Document Analysis and Recognition (Deadline Extended to September 30 - repost)
** IJDAR Discount for IAPR Members (repost)
** Journal of Imaging, Special Issue: "Document Image  Processing" (repost)

</accordion>
<accordion parent="accordion" heading="Message from the Editor">

This edition of the newsletter provides updates on all three conferences organized by TC-11 (ICDAR, DAS, and ICFHR), along with two closely related conferences organized by members of the TC-11 community (ASAR and ICPRAI). ASAR is concerned with Arabic script analysis and recognition, while ICPRAI is being held to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the renown CENPARMI lab in Montréal (http://www.concordia.ca/research/cenparmi.html), which many members of our community have been members of, visited, or collaborated with. Congratulations to Dr. Ching Suen and his team on reaching this impressive milestone.

A brief summary of news included in this edition of the newsletter is provided below.

'''Conferences:''' Our flagship conference '''ICDAR 2017''' is fast approaching. The conference web pages (http://u-pat.org/ICDAR2017/index.php) provide information about travel to Kyoto, the conference program, keynote speakers, tutorials, workshops, and our distinguished IAPR/ICDAR 2017 award winners. As a reminder for those planning to attend, online registration is open until October 9th (http://u-pat.org/ICDAR2017/attend_registration.php). Don't forget about the workshop on the future of Document Analysis and Recognition research, which is certain to produce interesting discussions and is '''free of charge for participants.'''

The official '''ICFHR 2018''' (Niagara Falls) Call for Papers and Call for Competitions are now out. '''DAS 2018''' (Vienna), '''ASAR 2018''' (London), and '''ICPRAI 2018''' (Montréal) also have Calls for Papers in this edition of the newsletter.

'''Journal Special Issues:''' The submission deadline for the IJDAR special issue on Deep Learning in Document Recognition is very soon (Sept. 30th). Submissions for another upcoming special issue on Document Image Processing in the Journal of Imaging are due Oct. 31st. Additional information can be found below.

'''Join us!''' If you are not already a member of the TC-11 community, please consider joining the [https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=iapr-tc11&A=1 TC11 mailing list].

'''Richard Zanibbi, TC-11 Communications Officer'''<br />
([mailto:rxzvcs@rit.edu rxzvcs@rit.edu])

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<accordion parent="accordion" heading="Dates and Deadlines">

== Deadlines ==

'''2017'''

* '''Sept. 30:''' IJDAR Special Issue Submissions: ''Deep Learning for Document Analysis and Recognition'' ( [http://www.springer.com/cda/content/document/cda_downloaddocument/Special+Issue+on+Deep+Learning+for+DAR.pdf?SGWID=0-0-45-1600550-p1122349 Call for Papers] )
* '''Oct. 31:''' ''Journal of Imaging'' Special Issue: ''Document Image Processing'' ( [http://www.mdpi.com/journal/jimaging/special_issues/document_image_processing Call for Papers] )
* '''Nov. 15:''' ICPRAI 2018 Paper Submission ( [http://users.encs.concordia.ca/~icprai18/index.html Call for Papers] )
* '''Nov. 20:''' DAS 2018 Paper Submission ( [https://das2018.caa.tuwien.ac.at/media/filer_public/9f/2e/9f2e9653-b73f-4899-902e-3dfa4109d744/cfp.pdf Call for Papers] )
* '''Dec. 1:''' ASAR 2018 Paper Submission ( [http://asar.ieee.tn/cfp Call for Papers] )
* '''Dec. 15:''' ICPR Workshop Proposal Deadline ( [http://www.icpr2018.org/index.php?m=content&c=index&a=show&catid=10&id=28 Call for Proposals] ) and Tutorial Proposal Deadline ( [http://www.icpr2018.org/index.php?m=content&c=index&a=show&catid=10&id=29 Call for Proposals] )

'''2018'''

* '''Jan. 5:''' ICPR Paper Submission ( [http://www.icpr2018.org/index.php?m=content&c=index&a=lists&catid=15 Call for Papers] )
* '''Jan. 8:''' ICFHR Competition Proposals ( [http://icfhr2018.org/competitions.html Call for Proposals] )
* '''Jan. 19:''' DAS 2018 Short Paper Submission ( [https://das2018.caa.tuwien.ac.at/media/filer_public/9f/2e/9f2e9653-b73f-4899-902e-3dfa4109d744/cfp.pdf Call for Papers] )
* '''Mar. 2:''' ICFHR 2018 Submissions ( [http://icfhr2018.org/pdf/ICFHR2018_CFP.pdf Call for Papers] )

== Upcoming Conference Dates ==

'''2017'''

* [http://u-pat.org/ICDAR2017 ICDAR 2017]. Kyoto, Japan (Nov. 9-15, 2017)

'''2018'''

* [http://asar.ieee.tn ASAR 2018]. London, UK (March 12-14, 2018)
* [https://das2018.caa.tuwien.ac.at DAS 2018]. Vienna, Austria (24-27 April, 2018)
* [http://icprai2018.com ICPRAI 2018]. Montreal, Canada (May 14-17, 2018)
* [https://icfhr2018.org ICFHR 2018]. Niagara Falls, USA (August 5-8, 2018)
* [http://www.icpr2018.org ICPR 2018]. Beijing, China (August 20-24, 2018)

'''2019 and Later'''

* ICDAR 2019, Brisbane, Australia (September 22-25, 2019)
* ICFHR 2020. Dortmund, Germany (September 8-10, 2020)

</accordion>
<accordion parent="accordion" heading="IAPR/ICDAR 2017 Awards (repost)">

'''Online Announcement (with recipient biographies)''':<br />
http://u-pat.org/ICDAR2017/awards_IAPR.php

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:''<br />
Dan Lopresti<br />
Jean-Marc Ogier<br />
Josep Llados<br />
Simone Marinai<br />
Cheng-Lin Liu<br />
Marcus Liwicki<br />
Venu Govindaraju<br />
Bart Lamiroy<br />
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:''<br />
Dan Lopresti<br />
Simone Marinai<br />
Cheng-Lin Liu<br />
Marcus Liwicki<br />
Venu Govindaraju

</accordion>
<accordion parent="accordion" heading="ICDAR 2017">

== Call for Participation: The Workshop for the Future of Document Analysis and Recognition (repost) ==

<pre>Important Dates
Nov. 12, 14:30-18:30: Workshop (co-located with ICDAR 2017)</pre>
'''Website:''' http://u-pat.org/ICDAR2017/program_special.php

In cooperation with the Institute of Document Analysis and Knowledge Science (IDAKS), Osaka Prefecture University Kyoto Terrsa, Kyoto, Japan

'''Workshop Chairs'''<br />
Koichi Kise, Osaka Prefecture University, Japan<br />
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<br />
Michael Blumenstein<br />
Andreas Dengel<br />
Dimosthenis Karatzas<br />
Koichi Kise<br />
C. V. Jawahar<br />
Bart Lamiroy<br />
Cheng-Lin Liu<br />
Marcus Liwicki<br />
Josep Llados<br />
Dan Lopresti<br />
Simone Marinai<br />
Jean-Marc Ogier<br />
Seiichi Uchida

'''Program'''

* 14:30-14:40 Opening<br />

* 14:40-15:50 Position paper presentation (5 min/invited speaker)<br />

* 15:50-16:20 Coffee break<br />

* 16:20-16:30 Discussion group formation (about 4 groups)<br />

* 16:30-17:50 Discussion (each group)<br />

* 17:50-18:30 Wrap-up (5 min/group + summary)

Looking forward to meeting you at the workshop!!

'''Koichi Kise, Workshop Co-Chair'''<br />
([mailto:kise@cs.osakafu-u.ac.jp kise@cs.osakafu-u.ac.jp])

== 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: http://u-pat.org/ICDAR2017/program_workshops.html.

'''HDI: First International Workshop on Human-Document Interaction'''<br />
Organizers: Jean-Christophe Burie, Mickaël Coustaty, Dimosthenis Karatzas and Koichi Kise

'''CBDAR: 7th International Workshop on Camera-Based Document Analysis and Recognition'''<br />
Organizers: Lluis Gomez-Bigorda, Muhammad Muzzamil Luqman and Dimosthenis Karatzas

'''MANPU: 2nd International Workshop on coMics Analysis, Processing and Understanding'''<br />
Organizers: Jean-Christophe Burie, Toshihiko Yamasaki and Motoi Iwata

'''ICDAR-WML: Workshop on Machine Learning'''<br />
Organizers: Umapada Pal and Eric Granger

'''HIP: 4th International Workshop on Historical Document Imaging and Processing'''<br />
Organizers: Andreas Fischer, Angelika Garz, Kengo Terasawa and Bill Barrett

'''IWCDF: 1st International Workshop on Computational Document Forensics'''<br />
Organizers: Jean-Marc Ogier, Utpal Garain and Apostolos Antonacopoulos

'''ICDAR-OST: 1st International Workshop on Open Services and Tools for Document Analysis'''<br />
Organizers: Marcel Würsch and Joseph Chazalon

'''GREC: 12th International Workshop on Graphics Recognition'''<br />
Organizers: Alicia Fornés and Bart Lamiroy

'''MOCR: 6th International Workshop on Multilingual OCR'''<br />
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 &amp; Umapada Pal, ICDAR-2017 Workshop Co-Chairs'''<br />
([mailto:Michael.Blumenstein@uts.edu.au Michael.Blumenstein@uts.edu.au], [mailto:umapada_pal@yahoo.com umapada_pal@yahoo.com])

== ICDAR 2017: Competitions List ==

HANDWRITTEN HISTORICAL DOCUMENT LAYOUT RECOGNITION

* Competition on Baseline Detection in Archival Documents: https://scriptnet.iit.demokritos.gr/competitions/5/
* Competition on Layout Analysis for Challenging Medieval Manuscripts: http://diuf.unifr.ch/main/hisdoc/icdar2017-hisdoc-layout-comp
* Competition on Historical Book Analysis: http://icdar2017hba.litislab.eu

HISTORICAL HANDWRITTEN SCRIPT ANALYSIS

* Competition on the Classification of Medieval Handwritings in Latin Script: http://icfhr2016-clamm.irht.cnrs.fr/icdar-2017/
* Competition on Historical Document Writer Identification: http://scriptnet.iit.demokritos.gr/competitions/6/
* Competition on Multi-script Writer Identification Using LAMIS-MSHD and CERUG Databases: https://icdar2017cmswi.sciencesconf.org/

CHARACTER/WORD SPOTTING

* Competition on Query-by-Example Glyph Spotting of Southeast Asian Palm Leaf Manuscript Images: http://amadi.univ-lr.fr/ICDAR2017_Competition/
* Handwritten Keyword Spotting Competition: https://scriptnet.iit.demokritos.gr/competitions/7

HANDWRITING RECOGNITION

* Competition on Handwritten Text Recognition on the READ Dataset: https://scriptnet.iit.demokritos.gr/competitions/4
* Competition on Information Extraction in Historical Handwritten Records: http://www.cvc.uab.es/5cofm/competition/

DOCUMENT IMAGE BINARIZATION

* Document Image Binarization Competition: https://vc.ee.duth.gr/dibco2017/

DOCUMENT RECOGNITION (LAYOUT ANALYSIS &amp; TEXT RECOGNITION)

* Competition on Recognition of Documents with Complex Layouts: http://www.primaresearch.org/RDCL2017/
* Competition on Early Indian Printed Documents: http://www.primaresearch.org/REID2017/
* Competition on Page Object Detection in Document Images: http://www.icst.pku.edu.cn/cpdp/ICDAR2017_PODCompetition/index.html

DOCUMENT DOCUMENT RECONSTRUCTION

* Smartphone-captured Document Image Reconstruction from Multiple Views: http://smartdoc.univ-lr.fr

POST OCR CORRECTION

* Competition on Post-OCR Text Correction: http://l3i.univ-larochelle.fr/ICDAR2017PostOCR

ROBUST READING COMPETITIONS

* Competition on Reading Chinese Text in the Wild: http://mclab.eic.hust.edu.cn/icdar2017chinese/
* Challenge on COCO-Text: http://rrc.cvc.uab.es/?ch=5
* Challenge on Text Extraction from Biomedical Literature Figures: http://prir.ustb.edu.cn/DeTEXT/ICDAR2017Competition/
* Challenge on Robust Reading Challenge on Omnidirectional Video: http://rrc.cvc.uab.es/?ch=7
* Competition on Multi-lingual scene text detection and script identification: http://rrc.cvc.uab.es/?ch=8

TEXT IN VIDEO

* Competition on Arabic Text Detection and Recognition in Multiresolution Video Frames (AcTiVComp17) http://diuf.unifr.ch/diva/AcTiVComp/index.html
* 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: http://icsdweb.aegean.gr/icdar2017

MISCELLANEOUS COMPETITIONS

* Competition on Multi-font and Multi-size Digitally Represented Arabic Text: http://diuf.unifr.ch/diva/APTI/competitionICDAR2017.html

</accordion>
<accordion parent="accordion" heading="DAS 2018: Call for Papers (repost)">

'''13th IAPR International Workshop on Document Analysis Systems (DAS 2018)'''<br />
''April 24-27 2018, Vienna, Austria''<br />
http://www.das2018-conference.org

'''Important Dates'''

<pre>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</pre>
'''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 &amp; Technologies and Commitees, please see the DAS 2018 website: http://www.das2018-conference.org

'''Contact:''' [mailto:das2018@caa.tuwien.ac.at das2018@caa.tuwien.ac.at]

'''Robert Sablatnig and Florian Kleber, DAS 2018 General Chairs'''<br />
([mailto:sab@caa.tuwien.ac.at sab@caa.tuwien.ac.at], [mailto:kleber@caa.tuwien.ac.at kleber@caa.tuwien.ac.at])

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<accordion parent="accordion" heading="ICFHR 2018">

== ICFHR 2018: Call for Papers ==

'''The 16th International Conference on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition'''<br />
''August 5 - 8, 2018 - Niagara Falls, USA''<br />
Web page: [http://icfhr2018.org icfhr2018.org]

PDF Version of this Call: [http://icfhr2018.org/pdf/ICFHR2018_CFP.pdf ICFHR2018_CFP.pdf]

'''Important Dates'''

<pre>March 2, 2018  Paper abstract submission
March 9, 2018  Full paper submission
 May 25, 2018  Author notifications
June 22, 2018  Camera-ready papers due</pre>
The '''International Conference on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition (ICFHR)''' is the flagship conference for handwriting recognition research and applications. The conference brings together experts in handwriting recognition from academia and industry to share their experiences and promote research and development in all aspects of handwriting recognition and handwriting applications.

'''ICFHR 2018''' is sponsored by the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR), and organized in part by [http://www.iapr-tc11.org/mediawiki/index.php/IAPR-TC11:Reading_Systems IAPR Technical Committee No. 11 (Reading Systems)].

'''Topics of interest to the conference include, but are not limited to:'''

* Handwriting Recognition<br />
* Cursive Script Recognition<br />
* Symbol, Equation, Sketch and Drawing Recognition<br />
* Handwritten Document Processing and Understanding<br />
* Language Models in Handwriting Recognition<br />
* Web-Based Applications<br />
* Handwritten Databases and Digital Libraries<br />
* Information Extraction &amp; Retrieval<br />
* Document Characterization<br />
* Form Processing<br />
* Word Spotting<br />
* Bank-Check Processing<br />
* Historical Document Processing<br />
* Forensic Studies and Security Issues<br />
* Writer Verification and Identification<br />
* Performance Enhancement and System Evaluation<br />
* Electronic Ink and Pen-Based Systems<br />
* Other Offline and Online Applications

'''Authors are invited to submit full-length papers of not more than six (6) pages.''' Papers must describe original work, and paper reviews will be double blind. Instructions for paper submission will be available on the ICFHR 2018 web site ([http://icfhr2018.org icfhr2018.org]).

Questions about paper submission should be directed to the Program Chairs ([mailto:pc@icfhr2018.org pc@icfhr2018.org]).

'''ICFHR 2018 Organizing Committee'''

''General Chairs''<br />
[https://cubs.buffalo.edu/about-the-director Venu Govindaraju], University of Buffalo, USA<br />
[http://ciir.cs.umass.edu/~manmatha R. Manmatha], A9/Amazon, USA<br />
[https://www.cs.rit.edu/~rlaz Richard Zanibbi], Rochester Institute of Technology, USA

''Program Chairs''<br />
[http://web.inf.ufpr.br/luizoliveira Luiz S. Oliveira], Federal University Parana, Brazil<br />
[http://www.isical.ac.in/~umapada/ Umapada Pal], Indian Statistical Institute, India<br />
[http://www.irccyn.ec-nantes.fr/~viardgau Christian Viard-Gaudin], University of Nantes, France

''Tutorial and Workshop Chairs''<br />
[https://coen.boisestate.edu/EBarneySmith Elisa Barney-Smith], Boise State, USA<br />
[http://human.ait.kyushu-u.ac.jp/~uchida/index-e.html Seiichi Uchida], Kyushu University, Japan

''Competition Program Chairs''<br />
[http://www.irccyn.ec-nantes.fr/~mouchere/index.php?lg=en Harold Mouchère], University of Nantes, France<br />
[http://www.cs.smith.edu/~nhowe Nicholas R. Howe], Smith College, USA

''Publicity Chairs''<br />
[http://thierry.paquet.free.fr Thierry Paquet], University of Rouen, France<br />
[http://labs.ebay.com/people/utkarsh-porwal Utkarsh Porwal], eBay, USA<br />
[http://web.tuat.ac.jp/~nakagawa/en/nakagawa.shtml Masaki Nakagawa], Tokyo University Agriculture and Technology, Japan

''Publications Chair''<br />
[http://www.cedar.buffalo.edu/personnel/ranga.html Srirangaraj Setlur], University of Buffalo, USA

''Organizing Chairs''<br />
[http://www.cedar.buffalo.edu/personnel/ranga.html Srirangaraj Setlur], University of Buffalo, USA<br />
[http://cubs.buffalo.edu/~inwogu Ifeoma Nwogu], Rochester Insitute of Technology, USA

''Sponsorship Chair''<br />
[http://www.isi.edu/about/bio/prem_natarajan Prem Natarajan], University of Southern California (ISI), USA

'''Richard Zanibbi, Co-Chair, ICFHR 2018'''<br />
( [mailto:rxzvcs@rit.edu rxzvcs@rit.edu] )

== ICFHR 2018: Call for Competitions ==

Online Version: http://icfhr2018.org/competitions.html

'''Important Dates'''

<pre> 8 January 2018:  Submission of competition proposals
15 January 2018:  Notification of acceptance
22 January 2018:  Competitions on icfhr2018.org, open to participants.
    1 June 2018:  Full papers describing competitions due 
   29 June 2018:  Accepted camera-ready papers due</pre>
The ICFHR 2018 Organizing Committee invites proposals for '''competitions addressing current research challenges in handwriting recognition and related areas of pattern recognition and vision'''. Competitions should aim at evaluating the performance of individual methods and systems that fall within the context of the conference’s Call for Papers. Competitions should also participate in the sharing and standardisation of handwriting recognition processes.

'''Proposal Requirements.''' Proposals should include a brief description of the competition, including the particular task under evaluation, and why this competition would be of interest to the ICFHR community. Please check online for the complete call with submission requirements and competition rules (http://icfhr2018.org/competitions.html).

'''Submissions of proposals.''' Proposals should be submitted by electronic mail to the ICFHR 2018 Competitions Chairs, Harold Mouchère and Nicholas Howe ([mailto:competitions@icfhr2018.org competitions@icfhr2018.org]).

'''Questions''' should be directed to the ICFHR2018 Competitions Chairs at [mailto:competitions@icfhr2018.org competitions@icfhr2018.org].

'''Online'''

* web: http://icfhr2018.org/competitions.html<br />

* twitter: [@IAPR_TC11](http://www.iapr-tc11.org/mediawiki/index.php/IAPR-TC11:Reading_Systems) #ICFHR2018 #ICFHR2018competitions

'''Harold Mouchère and Nicholas Howe, ICFHR 2018 Competition Chairs'''<br />
( [mailto:competitions@icfhr2018.org competitions@icfhr2018.org] )

</accordion>
<accordion parent="accordion" heading="IEEE ASAR 2018: Call for Papers">

'''2nd IEEE Int. Workshop on Arabic and Derived Script Analysis and Recognition<br />
(ASAR)'''<br />
''Dates:'' 12-14 March 2018<br />
''Venue:'' The Alan Turing Institute, London, United Kingdom<br />
''Endorsements:'' IEEE Region 8, IAPR<br />
''Website:'' http://asar.ieee.tn    ''E-mail:'' [mailto:asar@ieee.tn asar@ieee.tn]

'''Important Dates'''

<pre>Paper submission:          December 1, 2017
Acceptance notifications:  January 2, 2018
Camera-ready papers:       February 1, 2018</pre>
'''Publication:''' Registered and Presented papers will be submitted for inclusion into IEEE Xplore as well as other Abstracting and Indexing (A&amp;I) databases. Authors of some selected accepted papers presented at ASAR workshop will be invited to submit extended versions of their manuscripts for consideration in related international Journals.

'''Travel Grant Programs:'''<br />
IEEE Region 8 VCF: http://www.ieeer8.org/category/voluntary-contribution-fund<br />
IEEE Women In Engineering: http://wie.ieee.org/travel-grant

'''Plenary Speakers'''

* Umapada Pal (Indian Statistical Institute, India)
* Volker Märgner (Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany)
* Daniel Lowe (The British Library, United Kingdom)

'''Scope'''<br />
It is our pleasure to invite you to participate in the 2nd IEEE International Workshop on Arabic and derived Script Analysis and Recognition (ASAR 2018), which will be hosted by the Alan Turing Institute, London, in collaboration with the LORIA laboratory (University Lorraine, France) and REGIM-Lab. (University of Sfax, Tunisia), and will be held in London (United Kingdom) on March 12-14, 2018. ASAR 2018 is technically co-sponsored by IEEE Region 8, IEEE UK&amp;IR section, IEEE Tunisia section, and IAPR (under approval). The ASAR workshop provides an excellent opportunity for researchers and practitioners at all levels of experience to meet colleagues and to share new ideas and knowledge about Arabic and derived script document analysis and recognition methods. The workshop enjoys strong participation from researchers in both industry and academia. The workshop program will include keynote speakers, discussion sessions, and oral sessions.

'''Areas'''<br />
Topics include but are not limited to the following:

* Printed/Handwritten text recognition
* Arabic Document image watermarking
* Word spotting
* Forensic Arabic document analysis
* Language and script recognition
* Historical Arabic document analysis
* Authoring, annotation, and presentation systems
* Pen-based user interface
* Camera-based Arabic document image analysis
* Arabic Document retrieval systems
* Arabic Document analysis for mobile devices, for the internet
* Information extraction
* Arabic Document databases and digital libraries
* Arabic Document understanding
* Multilingual Arabic document analysis
* Performance evaluation

'''Sponsors &amp; Exhibitions'''<br />
We invite your organisation to be a sponsor. It will play an essential role for the success of the workshop. We expect to welcome experts and researchers from all over the world and numerous high-ranking guests. Therefore, we anticipate extensive coverage of the event. To take advantage of these opportunities and to help enhance them, corporations, research centers, universities and individuals are invited to become sponsors of ASAR workshop. It will be a good opportunity to present your enterprise and your expertise to a distinguished audience. We are looking forward to a successful cooperation with you!

'''Venue'''<br />
The Alan Turing Institute is the UK is a national institute for data science. Five universities (Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford, University College London and Warwick) and the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (the main UK government agency for funding research and training in engineering and the physical sciences) created The Alan Turing Institute in 2015. The mission of The Alan Turing Institute is to make great leaps in data science research in order to change the world for the better. The Institute's goals are to undertake world-class research in data science, apply its research to real-world problems, driving economic impact and societal good, lead the training of a new generation of data scientists, and shape the public conversation around data.

Website: http://www.turing.ac.uk

We are looking forward to a successful cooperation with you!

'''General Chairs'''<br />
Adel M. Alimi, Univesity of Sfax, Tunisia<br />
Abdel Belaïd, University of Lorraine, France<br />
Mohamed Cheriet, …TS, University of Quebec, Canada<br />
( [mailto:asar@ieee.tn asar@ieee.tn], http://asar.ieee.tn/committee )

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<accordion parent="accordion" heading="ICPRAI 2018: Celebrating 30 Years of CENPARMI ">

'''Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of CENPARMI'''<br />
''May 14-17, 2018''<br />
''Concordia University, Montréal, Canada''

'''Free Public Lecture:''' Sunday May 13, 2018, 2:00 - 4:00 p.m.<br />
'''URL:''' http://www.icprai2018.com (see links for Author Guidelines, Free Public Lectures, Keynote Speakers)<br />
'''PDF CFP:''' https://users.encs.concordia.ca/~icprai18/ICPRAI2018-CFP.pdf

'''Important Dates'''

<pre>Paper submission:               August 15, 2017 - November 15, 2017  
Notification of acceptance:     January 15, 2018  
Camera ready due:               February 15, 2018  
Free Public Lecture:            Sunday May 13, 2018, 2:00 - 4:00 p.m.  
Conference:                     May 14-17, 2018</pre>
To mark its 30th Anniversary, CENPARMI (Centre for Pattern Recognition and Machine Intelligence of Concordia University) is organizing an international conference on Pattern Recognition &amp; Artificial Intelligence.

'''For more information,''' please visit or contact us:

* Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ICPRAI2018
* Inquiries: [mailto:icprai2018@cenparmi.concordia.ca icprai2018@cenparmi.concordia.ca]

Thank you,

''ICPRAI 2018 Organizing Committee''

'''ICPRAI 2018 - First International Conference on Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence'''<br />
Concordia University, Montreal, Canada<br />
Web: http://www.icprai2018.com<br />
eMail: [mailto:icprai2018@cenparmi.concordia.ca icprai2018@cenparmi.concordia.ca]

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== New Issue: IJDAR Vol. 20, Issue 3 (Sept. 2017 - repost) ==

'''Table of Contents'''

[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10032-017-0286-6 A multi-one-class dynamic classifier for adaptive digitization of document streams]<br />
Anh Khoi Ngo Ho, Véronique Eglin, Nicolas Ragot &amp; Jean-Yves Ramel

[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10032-017-0287-5 A sigma-lognormal model-based approach to generating large synthetic online handwriting sample databases]<br />
Ujjwal Bhattacharya, Réjean Plamondon, Souvik Dutta Chowdhury, Pankaj Goyal &amp; Swapan K. Parui

[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10032-017-0289-3 On writer identification for Arabic historical manuscripts]<br />
Abedelkadir Asi, Alaa Abdalhaleem, Daniel Fecker, Volker Märgner &amp; Jihad El-Sana

[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10032-017-0288-4 Post-processing coding artifacts for JPEG documents]<br />
The-Anh Pham &amp; Mathieu Delalandre

[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10032-017-0285-7 Mean-Shift segmentation and PDE-based nonlinear diffusion: toward a common variational framework for foreground/background document image segmentation]<br />
Fadoua Drira &amp; Frank LeBourgeois

== IJDAR Special Issue Deep Learning for Document Analysis and Recognition (Deadline Extended to September 30 - repost) ==

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 [http://www.springer.com/cda/content/document/cda_downloaddocument/Special+Issue+on+Deep+Learning+for+DAR.pdf?SGWID=0-0-45-1600550-p1122349 Call for Submissions.]

'''Cheng-Lin Liu, Gernot A. Fink, Venu Govindarajum, Lianwen Jin  (Guest Editors)'''<br />
( [mailto:liucl@nlpr.ia.ac.cn liucl@nlpr.ia.ac.cn], [mailto:Gernot.Fink@tu-dortmund.de Gernot.Fink@tu-dortmund.de], [mailto:govind@buffalo.edu govind@buffalo.edu], [mailto:eelwjin@scut.edu.cn eelwjin@scut.edu.cn] )

'''Koichi Kise, Daniel Lopresti and Simone Marinai (IJDAR Editors-in-Chief)'''<br />
( [mailto:kise@cs.osakafu-u.ac.jp kise@cs.osakafu-u.ac.jp], [mailto:lopresti@cse.lehigh.edu lopresti@cse.lehigh.edu], [mailto:simone.marinai@unifi.it simone.marinai@unifi.it] )

== 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/intjournal.php
* [http://www.iapr.org/publications/intjournal.php http://www.iapr.org/publications/intjrnlsub.php]

'''Koichi Kise, Daniel Lopresti and Simone Marinai, IJDAR Editors-in-Chief'''<br />
( [mailto:kise@cs.osakafu-u.ac.jp kise@cs.osakafu-u.ac.jp], [mailto:lopresti@cse.lehigh.edu lopresti@cse.lehigh.edu], [mailto:simone.marinai@unifi.it simone.marinai@unifi.it] )

== Journal of Imaging, Special Issue: &quot;Document Image Processing&quot; (repost) ==

The ''Journal of Imaging'' (ISSN 2313-433X) is currently running a Special Issue entitled ''Document Image Processing''. Dr. Ergina Kavallieratou (University of the Aegean, Greece) and Dr. Laurence Likforman-Sulem (Telecom ParisTech/TSI) are serving as the Guest Editors for this Special Issue.

The intention of this Special Issue is to collect the experiences of leading scientists of the field, but also to be an assessment tool for people who are new to the world of document image processing.

This Special Issue intends to cover the following topics, but is not limited to them:

* Document Image Analysis
* Document Understanding
* Document Analysis Systems
* Document Processing
* Camera-based Document Processing
* Document Databases and Digital Libraries
* Mining Document Image Collections
* Document Forensics [...]

The deadline for manuscript submission is '''October 31, 2017.''' For more details please visit the website:

http://www.mdpi.com/journal/jimaging/special_issues/document_image_processing

Submitted papers should not be under consideration for publication elsewhere. We also encourage authors to send a short abstract or tentative title to the Editorial Office in advance ([mailto:jimaging@mdpi.com jimaging@mdpi.com] and [mailto:alma.wu@mdpi.com alma.wu@mdpi.com]), as this will help us with planning.

The Journal of Imaging is an open access publication, which provides unlimited free access by readers. While open access publications typically require an article processing charge (or similar), the Journal of Imaging ''does not currently require authors to pay any sort of fee''.

For further details on article formatting and the submission process, please see the instructions for authors at the journal website:

http://www.mdpi.com/journal/jimaging/instructions

'''Ergina Kavallieratou, Guest Editor'''<br />
( [mailto:kavallieratou@aegean.gr kavallieratou@aegean.gr] )

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