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Message from the Editor

With the ICDAR paper submission deadline now rapidly approaching (March 15th), this month's newsletter is full of related announcements, for the Doctoral Consortium, ICDAR 2017 award nominations, workshops, and competitions.

In other news, IJDAR is soliciting papers for a special issue on Deep Learning methods for document analysis and recognition, and new data sets containing document images captured using mobile devices have been posted on the TC-11 web site.

Finally, on the career front, new PhD and Postdoctoral Fellow positions are available at Uppsala University. Be sure to tell your students and colleagues about these excellent opportunities!

Our apologies for the delay with this month's newsletter (admittedly, being released a bit into the next month!). The good news is that this happened largely because of all the activity currently going on in the TC-11 community.

In the next newsletter, we expect to announce the location for DAS 2018. Stay tuned!

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

Dates and Deadlines

March 15, 2017: ICDAR 2017, Kyoto, Japan (November 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)
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
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)

New Datasets

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

IJDAR Special Issue: Deep Learning for Document Analysis and Recognition

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 )

ICDAR 2017

Call for Nominations: ICDAR 2017 Awards

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:

A nominating letter (1 page) including a brief citation to be included in the certificate.
A brief vitae (2 pages) of the nominee highlighting the accomplishments being recognized.
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

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 )

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 Competition -- RRC-MLT : Call For Participation

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

Competition Web Page: 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 : http://www.ict.griffith.edu.au/cvsi2017
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)

Careers

Open PhD and Postdoc Positions in Handwritten Text Recognition at Uppsala University (Sweeden)

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 seeking one postdoc and one PhD student that would like to work in an interesting and expanding research environment.

Postdoctoral position: http://www.uu.se/en/about-uu/join-us/details/?positionId=133965
- Description: http://essenceofescience.se/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Handwritten_text.pdf
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

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