IAPR-TC11: Newsletter 2017/03

March, 2017

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Message from the Editor

Things continue to be busy in the TC-11 community! Probably the most pressing announcement concerns the ICDAR 2017 paper submission deadline, which has been extended to April 1st (abstracts) and April 7th (full papers).

As ICDAR is now fast approaching, various other ICDAR-related items are included in this issue. These include announcements for competitions, workshops, tutorials, the ICDAR Awards and the ICDAR Doctoral Consortium.

This month's newsletter also includes the first announcement for DAS 2018, which will be held in Vienna, Austria. Additional details will be provided in upcoming newsletters. Other meeting announcements include the 1st Workshop on Human-Document Interaction, and the Conference of the Institute of the Americas.

In this issue you will also find information about Special Issues in IJDAR and IEEE THMS pertinent to our community. These Special Issues concern deep learning (submissions are open) and handwriting/drawing in interactive systems (now available). Also, good news for those interested in subscribing to IJDAR: the Editors have negotiated a substantially reduced subscription fee for IAPR members.

Best of luck with preparing your ICDAR submissions!

Richard Zanibbi, TC-11 Communications Officer
(rxzvcs@rit.edu)

Dates and Deadlines

• April 1 & 7, 2017: - EXTENDED - ICDAR 2017 Abstracts/Papers, Kyoto, Japan (Nov. 10-15, 2017) (http://www.iapr.org/icdar2017)
• April 8, 2017: GCPR 2017, Basel, Switzerland (September 13-15, 2017) (https://gcpr2017.dmi.unibas.ch/en)
• April 15, 2017: Conference of the Institute of the Americas, La Rochelle, France (Oct. 18-20, 2017)
• May 15, 2017: Nominations for ICDAR 2017 Awards
• July 15, 2017: ICDAR Doctoral Consortium Applications
• August 31, 2017: IJDAR Special Issue Submissions: Deep Learning for Document Analysis and Recognition (Submission Instructions)
• Nov. 15, 2017: ICPRAI 2018, Montreal, Canada (May 14-17, 2018)
  

(http://users.encs.concordia.ca/~icprai18/index.html)

• March 2, 2018: ICFHR 2018, Niagara Falls, USA (August 6-8, 2018) (http://www.cs.rit.edu/~icfhr2018)

Upcoming Conferences

• DAS 2018, TBD
• ICFHR 2020, Dortmund, Germany (September 8-10, 2020)

Datasets (repost)

The following datasets were recently added to the TC-11 Datasets Collection.

• ICDAR'15 Smartphone Document Capture and OCR Competition
• Challenge 1: Document localization in video
• Challenge 2: Document localization and recognition (OCR)
• University of La Rochelle - SmartDoc QA: baseline benchmark for quality assessment methods for mobile captured documents

Conferences and Workshops

ICDAR 2017 Paper Deadline Extension
(Abstracts: April 1, Papers: April 7)

Dear Researchers,

As we experienced certain technical problems with the server at the time of the abstract submission deadline, plus the announcement of the abstract deadline extension did not reach everyone as intended, we would like to extend the abstract deadline until April 1st which was the current date for full paper submission. Due to this extension, the deadline of full paper submission is postponed to April 7th. The following are the updated deadlines and no further extension will be granted.

Abstract submission: April 1st (UTC-8, Pacific Time Zone)
Full paper submission: April 7th (UTC-8, Pacific Time Zone)

Looking forward to having your submissions!

Best regards,

ICDAR 2017 PC chairs

Masakazu Iwamura, Executive Co-Chair, ICDAR 2017
(masa@cs.osakafu-u.ac.jp)

First Announcement: International Workshop on Document Analysis Systems 2018 (DAS 2018)

We are happy to announce that the next edition of DAS, will be held in Vienna, Austria, during April 2018.

Further announcements and the Call for Papers will follow soon.

Robert Sablatnig and Florian Kleber, DAS 2018 General Chairs
(sab@caa.tuwien.ac.at, kleber@caa.tuwien.ac.at)

Call for Papers: 1st International Workshop on Human-Document Interaction

Workshop Dates: November 10 or 11th, 2017
Location: Kyoto Japan (in conjunction with ICDAR 2017)
Web Page: www.cvc.uab.es/HDI2017

HDI 2017 will focus on how humans interact with written information around them, and the interfaces between users and documents. The term document is meant in the wider possible sense, to refer to any physical object that carries written information.

The workshop aims to create a space for debate between the Document Image Analysis and Recognition and the Human-Computer Interaction communities, and it is motivated by a number of recent developments that point to a coming change of paradigm in the way we interact with written information around us.

Fresh paper submissions as well as re-submissions of improved versions of rejected ICDAR papers (submitted along with the original reviews) are welcome. The topics of interest include among others:

• Augmented documents
• Linking physical and digital content
• Reading behaviour analysis
• Human factors
• User experience and usability
• Wearable sensors in reading
• Interaction for facilitating Document Image Analysis (teaching reading systems through the way humans interact with written information)
• Document Image Analysis for enabling Interaction
• Content personalisation
• Applications (e.g. document editing, interactive translation, collaborative editing)

Accepted papers will be published in the "ICDAR 2017 Workshops" IEEE CPS volume.

Important Dates

Submission Deadline (normal papers): July 1, 2017
Submission Deadline (ICDAR resubmissions): July 15, 2017
Notification: July 31, 2017
Camera Ready: September 1, 2017
Workshop: November 10 or 11, 2017 (TBC)

Workshop Chairs

Jean-Christophe Burie (L3i Laboratory, University of La Rochelle, France)
Mickaël Coustaty (L3i Laboratory, University of La Rochelle, France)
Dimosthenis Karatzas (Computer Vision Centre, Spain)
Koichi Kise (Osaka Prefecture University)
Kai Kunze (Keio University, Japan)

Dimosthenis Karatzas, HDI 2017 Workshop Co-Chair
(dimos@cvc.uab.es)

Call for Papers:
2017 Conference of the Institute of the Americas

Conference Dates: October 18-20, 2017
Location: La Rochelle, France

• Abstracts Due: April 15, 2017
  

• Scientific Committee Decisions: 15 May, 2017
  

• Submission of Full Papers: 31 July, 2017

The 2017 conference of the Institute of the Americas proposes to explore the evolutions of practices and knowledge in the field of the human and social sciences closely related to the development of digital techniques and their applications. This edition will specifically focus on the digital humanities and digital history concepts, and could thus organize its reflections around the following avenues:

1. New heuristic tools: the multi-disciplinarity and collaborative dimension in American studies.
   

1. Political, financial and institutional issues of Digital Humanities in American Studies
   

1. From the Americas to the Atlantic and the Pacific: transnational studies in the Digital Age
   

1. The role of legal and management sciences
   

1. Opening the field to social demand: addressing issues of pedagogy, heritage management, and the mediatization of scientific production

Abstracts (Cambria, size 12 font, 1.5 line spacing) will include:

• a title, the names of the authors, their institutional affiliation and a five-line summary of their research activities;
  

• an abstract of approximately 450 words;
  

• 5 keywords

The file name should be 'IdA2017' followed by the surname of the author or first author. The proposal may be written in French, English, Spanish or Portuguese. It will be examined by two members of the Scientific Committee. The final papers should be sent two months before the conference to the following mailing address in order to be transmitted to the scientific committee: colloque2017@institutdesameriques.fr.

The Organizing Committee is committed to achieving a balance between doctoral candidates, young and confirmed researchers. The conference is open to all disciplines.

Details are available in French and English.

Mickaël Coustaty, Associate Professor, Université de La Rochelle
(mickael.coustaty@univ-lr.fr)

ICDAR 2017: Accepted Workshops and Tutorials - (repost)

Nine workshops and three tutorials will be offered at ICDAR 2017. You can find the names and organizers for each below. Please direct any questions to the workshop and/or tutorial chairs (contact information is provided below).

Workshops

• HDI 2017: First International Workshop on Human-Document Interaction
  

Jean-Christophe Burie, Mickaël Coustaty, Dimosthenis Karatzas and Koichi Kise

• CBDAR 2017: 7th International Workshop on Camera-Based Document Analysis and Recognition
  

Lluis Gomez-Bigorda, Muhammad Muzzamil Luqman and Dimosthenis Karatzas

• MANPU 2017: 2nd International Workshop on coMics Analysis, Processing and Understanding
  

Jean-Christophe Burie, Toshihiko Yamasaki and Motoi Iwata

• WML ICDAR: Workshop on Machine Learning
  

Umapada Pal and Eric Granger

• HIP 2017: 4th International Workshop on Historical Document Imaging and Processing
  

Andreas Fischer, Angelika Garz, Kengo Terasawa and Bill Barrett

• IWCDF 2017: 1st International Workshop on Computational Document Forensics
  

Jean-Marc Ogier, Utpal Garain and Apostolos Antonacopoulos

• ICDAR-OST: 1st International Workshop on Open Services and Tools for Document Analysis
  

Marcel Würsch and Joseph Chazalon

• GREC: 12th International Workshop on Graphics Recognition
  

Alicia Fornés and Bart Lamiroy

• MOCR: 6th International Workshop on Multilingual OCR
  

Venu Govindaraju, Prem Natarajan, Santanu Chaudhury and Srirangaraj Setlur

Tutorials

Each of tutorial will last half a day.

• RTRS: Building a Robust Text Reading System for Unconstrained Scene Images
  

Zhizhong Su and Chengquan Zhang

• GMPRDIA: Graph-based Methods in Pattern Recognition and Document Image Analysis
  

Anjan Dutta, Muhammad Muzzamil Luqman, Josep Lladós Canet, Jean-Marc OGIER

• WS: Word Spotting: From Bag-of-Features to Deep Learning
  

Gernot A. Fink

Michael Blumenstein and Umapada Pal, ICDAR 2017 Workshop Chairs
(Michael.Blumenstein@uts.edu.au, umapada@isical.ac.in)

Simone Marinai and Josep Llados, ICDAR 2017 Tutorial Chairs
(simone.marinai@unifi.it, josep@cvc.uab.es)

ICDAR 2017: Competitions

ICDAR 2017 Competition -- RRC-MLT : Call For Participation (repost)

Robust Reading Competition: Challenge on Multi-Lingual Scene Text Detection and Script Identification

Download the call here: http://rrc.cvc.uab.es/files/RRC-MLT-2017-CFP.pdf

We invite you to participate in our challenge on multi-lingual scene detection and script identification. This year: more scenes and more languages in scene text images!

See more information at our website: http://rrc.cvc.uab.es/?ch=8

Nibal Nayef, RRC-MLT Competition Organizer
(nibal.nayef@univ-lr.fr)

ICDAR 2017 Competition -- Post-OCR Text Correction: Call for Participation (repost)

http://l3i.univ-larochelle.fr/ICDAR2017PostOCR

The goal of this competition is to improve/denoise OCR-ed texts, based on an original corpus of OCRed documents composed of 12M characters (2.1M tokens) aligned with their corresponding Gold Standard, with an equal share of English- and French-written materials. There are two independent subtasks: 1) Detection of OCR errors, and 2) Correction of OCR errors. A competition report including both the description of the methodology and a comparative analysis of participants' performances will be submitted for publication at ICDAR 2017.

IMPORTANT DATES

• Training dataset available online : End of Feb. 2017
  
• Registration deadline : 30th March 2017
  
• Result submission : 15th June 2017

To participate, please contact the competition organizers below.

Guillaume CHIRON (BnF/L3i), Antoine DOUCET (L3i), and Jean-Philippe MOREUX (BnF), Competition Organizers
(guillaume.chiron@bnf.fr, antoine.doucet@univ-lr.fr, jean-philippe.moreux@bnf.fr)

ICDAR 2017 Competitions : An Overview - (repost)

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce that the ICDAR'17 that will be held in Kyoto (November, 10th-15th) will organize a set of competitions dedicated to a large set of document analysis problems. You are cordially invited to participate in this scientific event that will be a very good opportunity to objectively compare the quality of algorithms in different categories of challenges. Please consider submitting your algorithm(s) to all competitions in the same category, as we asked the individual competition organizers to synchronize their evaluation metrics, if possible. You will find below the different categories of competitions, and the URL of their respective website, that will allow you to get all the required information for participating.

• Category : 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
• Category : 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/
• Category : 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 : TBA
• Category : 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/
• Category : Document Image Binarization
  • Document Image Binarization Competition : https://vc.ee.duth.gr/dibco2017/
• Category : Document Recognition (Layout analysis & 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
• Category : Document Document Reconstruction
  • Smartphone-captured Document Image Reconstruction from Multiple Views : http://smartdoc.univ-lr.fr
• Category : Post OCR Correction
  • Competition on Post-OCR Text Correction : http://l3i.univ-larochelle.fr/ICDAR2017PostOCR
• Category : 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
• Category : Text in Video
  • Competition on Arabic Text Detection and Recognition in Multiresolution Video Frames ̶ AcTiVComp’17 : http://diuf.unifr.ch/diva/AcTiVComp/index.html
  • Competition on Video Script Identification : TBA
• Category : Forensics
  • Competition on File Type and Altered Image Identification : http://icsdweb.aegean.gr/icdar2017
• Category : Miscellaneous Competitions
  • Competition on Multi-font and Multi-size Digitally Represented Arabic Text : http://diuf.unifr.ch/diva/APTI/competitionICDAR2017.html

Looking forward to meeting you in Kyoto.

Kind regards,
Marcus Liwicki & Jean-Marc Ogier, ICDAR 2017 Competition Chairs
(liwicki@cs.uni-kl.de, president.larochelle@univ-lr.fr)

ICDAR 2017: Awards and Doctoral Consortium

Call for Nominations: ICDAR 2017 Awards (repost)

Nominations Due: May 15, 2017

The ICDAR Award Program is an established program designed to recognize individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the field of Document Analysis and Recognition in one or more of the following areas:

• Research
• Training of students
• Research/Industry interaction
• Service to the profession

Every two years, two awards categories are presented. Namely, the IAPR/ICDAR Young Investigator Award (less than 40 years old at the time the award is made), and the IAPR/ICDAR Outstanding Achievements Award. Each award will consist of a token gift and a suitably inscribed certificate. The recipient of the Outstanding Achievements award will be invited to give the opening key note speech at the ICDAR 2015 conference, introduced by the recipient from the previous conference.

Nominations are invited for the ICDAR 2017 Awards in both categories.

The nomination packet should include the following:

1. A nominating letter (1 page) including a brief citation to be included in the certificate.
2. A brief vitae (2 pages) of the nominee highlighting the accomplishments being recognized.
3. Supporting letters (1 page each) from 3 active researchers from at least 3 different countries.

A nomination is usually put forward by a researcher (preferably from a different Institution than the nominee) who is knowledgeable of the scientific achievements of the nominee, and who organizes letters of support.

Submission procedure is strictly confidential, and self-nominations are not allowed.

Please send nominations packets electronically to the Awards Committee Co-Chairs Dimosthenis Karatzas ([matilto:dimos@cvc.uab.es dimos@cvc.uab.es]) and Bart Lamiroy (bart.lamiroy@loria.fr). The deadline for receipt of nominations is May 15th, 2017 but early submissions are strongly encouraged.

The final decision will be made by the Awards Committee which is composed of the following members (ICDAR advisory board and previous awardees): Dimosthenis Karatzas, Bart Lamiroy, Dan Lopresti, Jean-marc Ogier, Josep Llados, Simone Marinai, Cheng-Lin Liu, Marcus Liwicki (2015 IAPR/ICDAR Young Investigator Award recipient), Venu Govindaraju (2015 IAPR/ICDAR Outstanding Achievements Awards recipient)

Dimosthenis Karatzas, IAPR TC-11 Chair
(dimos@cvc.uab.es)

ICDAR 2017 Doctoral Consortium (repost)

In 2011, the first Doctoral Consortium in the Document Analysis community was organized in conjunction with the International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR). This has led to successful successor events at ICDAR 2013 and ICDAR 2015. The tradition of having a Doctoral Consortium as a satellite event to the ICDAR main conference will be continued at ICDAR 2017 in Kyoto, Japan.

The goal of the ICDAR 2017 Doctoral 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.

Participation in the ICDAR 2017 Doctoral Consortium will be limited to 25 students. Prospective participants are encouraged to submit their application by July 15 (submission procedure to be announced). The Doctoral Consortium Chairs will then review all applications received. Preference will be given to students who are at a stage in their studies most likely to benefit (i.e., they have identified a research direction and published some initial results, but the thesis is not yet set in stone).

Participation to the Doctoral Consortium will be free for all accepted students, i.e., there will be no extra registration fees!

The ICDAR 2017 Doctoral Consortium will take place the day before the main conference, i.e., on Sunday, November 12.

IMPORTANT DATES

• Submission deadline: July 15
  
• Doctoral Consortium: November 12

We are looking forward to your participation!

Véronique Eglin & Rafael Dueire Lins, ICDAR 2017 Doctoral Consortium Co-Chairs
( veronique.eglin@insa-lyon.fr, rdl.ufpe@gmail.com )

Journals

IJDAR Discount for IAPR Members

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/intjrnlsub.php

Koichi Kise, Daniel Lopresti and Simone Marinai, IJDAR Editors-in-Chief
( kise@cs.osakafu-u.ac.jp, lopresti@cse.lehigh.edu, simone.marinai@unifi.it ) ?IN ## IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems: Special Issue on Drawing and Handwriting Processing for User-Centered Systems

The April 2017 issue of IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems is concerned with interactive systems that incorporate handwriting and/or drawing. The Special Issue aims to bring together some of the most valuable research contributions and applicable solutions in the field of drawing and handwriting processing for human–machine interaction.

Twelve papers are included in the special issue concerning diverse topics such as signature verification, user-centered document segmentation, sketch retrieval, combined speech and handwriting entry, emotion and handwriting, and dysgraphia.

The issue is available online now: THMS April 2017. Please spread the word, and take a moment to peruse the Table of Contents.

Réjean Plamondon, Guest Editor, IEEE THMS Special Issue
(rejean.plamondon@polymtl.ca)

IJDAR Special Issue:
Deep Learning for Document Analysis and Recognition (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 August 31, 2017. For further information, please see the Call for Submissions.

Koichi Kise, Daniel Lopresti and Simone Marinai, IJDAR Editors-in-Chief
( kise@cs.osakafu-u.ac.jp, lopresti@cse.lehigh.edu, simone.marinai@unifi.it )

Careers

Open Position in Handwritten Text Recognition at Uppsala University (Sweeden) - (updated)

At Uppsala University we are seeking persons who would like to work in the area of handwritten text recognition. The positions will allow you to work with machine learning algorithms on high performance computers. We are currently seeking one PhD student that would like to work in an interesting and expanding research environment.

• PhD position: http://www.uu.se/en/about-uu/join-us/details/?positionId=131835
• Description: http://www.math.uu.se/digitalAssets/396/c_396868-l_1-k_hast.pdf

Please contact Dr. Anders Hast for more information: anders.hast@it.uu.se For more information about the research group, please see: https://www.it.uu.se/research/project/q2b.

Update: the postdoctoral position advertised in last month's TC-11 newsletter has been filled.

Anders Hast, Associate Professor, Uppsala University
(anders.hast@it.uu.se)

Contributions and Subscriptions

Call for Contributions: To contribute news items, please send a short email to the editor, Richard Zanibbi (rxzvcs@rit.edu). Contributions might include conference and workshop announcements/updates/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: Join the TC-11 Mailing List. To manage your subscription, please visit the mailing list homepage: TC-11 Mailing List Homepage.

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