Call for System Demonstrations

The system demonstration track at ACL 2022 is a venue for papers describing system demonstrations, ranging from early prototypes to mature production-ready systems. Publicly available open-source or open-access systems are of special interest.

All accepted demos are published in a companion volume of the conference proceedings. We expect at least one of the authors to present a live demo during a demo session at ACL 2022, with an accompanying poster.

Submissions will undergo a single-blind reviewing process. Therefore, papers may include author and affiliation information, and freely make references to previously published material, and URLs.

This year we are incorporating ethical considerations in the review process. Authors will be allowed extra unlimited space after the main content for a broader impact statement or other discussion of ethics. Please review the ethics policy before submitting.

Topics of Interest

Of interest are all topics related to theoretical and applied computational linguistics, such as (but not limited to) the topics listed on the main conference website. Submitted systems may be of the following types:

» Natural Language Processing systems or system components

» Application systems using language technology components

» Software tools for Computational Linguistics research

» Software for analysis, demonstration, or evaluation

» Software supporting learning or education

» Tools for data visualization and annotation

» Development tools

Please note: Commercial sales and marketing activities are not appropriate in the system demonstration track at ACL 2022.

Important Dates

Paper submission deadline                           Monday, January 24, 2022
Notification of acceptance                           Monday, February 28, 2022
Camera-ready submission                            Monday, March 28, 2022
Final notification for papers requiring       Monday, April 4, 2022

ethics re-review    

All deadlines are 11.59 pm UTC -12h (“anywhere on Earth”).

Best Demo Award

We will present a Best Demo Paper Award. The winner will be chosen based on the contribution and the completeness of the system, as assessed by the reviewers and also based on the live demo at the conference.

Submission Guidelines

All submissions should be made electronically via START. Please note that the submission platform is different from the one used by the main conference.

Use this link to make your submission: https://www.softconf.com/acl2022/demos/user/scmd.cgi

Submissions must include the following:

1) A paper describing the motivation and the technical details of the system, including visual aids (e.g., screenshots, snapshots, or diagrams). See examples of recently accepted demo papers in ACL 2021, NAACL 2021, EMNLP 2020, ACL 2020, NAACL 2019, NAACL 2018, ACL 2018, ACL 2017, EMNLP 2017, NAACL 2016, ACL 2015, and NAACL 2015.

The papers must be no more than six (6) pages long, plus unlimited extra space for an optional ethics/broader impact statement and also unlimited space for references. Please use the main ACL 2022 paper style files. Accepted papers will be given one additional page of content, so that reviewers’ comments can be taken into account.

Any papers that do not follow the official style guidelines and page limits will be automatically rejected.

2) A short (max. 2 minutes) video demonstrating the system. This video will be used to evaluate the paper, but it will not be published unless requested.

A screencast with audio narration is a natural choice for demos that can be presented on a screen. Otherwise, a video of a user interacting with the system can be used.

The production quality of the video is not of interest. Hence, we encourage the videos to be simply a screencast of the software that is getting demoed, with zero to minimal editing efforts.

We recommend that you publish your video on YouTube or another website and include the link in your paper. If you prefer not to publicly upload a screencast, please submit the video (in MPEG4 format). The video must be included as supplementary material when you submit your paper through START.

In addition, we strongly recommend that all demos be made available via one of the following formats: (a) a live demo website, or (b) a website with a downloadable installation package of the demo. We understand though that  this might be impossible, e.g., when special hardware is required or when access is otherwise limited.

Submission Policy

The demo paper has to be original, written specifically for this conference and cannot be submitted elsewhere. The paper must also report on a substantial improvement (>30%), if the system that is being described has been reported elsewhere before.

Authors submitting more than one demo paper to ACL 2022 must ensure that the submissions do not overlap significantly (>25%) with each other. Submissions of identical or closely related work to multiple tracks at ACL 2022 (Research, SRW, Industry, or Demo) will be rejected by all tracks.

Reviewing Policy

Reviewing will be single-blind, and thus authors do not need to conceal their identity. Thus, the demo papers should include the authors’ names and affiliations. Self-references are also allowed. Relevant papers that meet formatting requirements will be assessed on the basis of their relevance to the demo track, contribution, clarity, completeness, and novelty.

Ethics Policy

Authors are required to honor the ethical code set out in the ACM Code of Ethics. The consideration of the ethical impact of our research, use of data, and potential applications of our work has always been an important consideration, and as artificial intelligence is becoming more mainstream, these issues are increasingly pertinent. We ask that all authors read the code, and ensure that their work is conformant to this code. We reserve the right to reject papers on ethical grounds, where the authors are judged to have operated counter to the code of ethics, or have inadequately addressed legitimate ethical concerns about their work.

Authors will be allowed extra space after the 6th page for a broader impact statement or other discussion of ethics. The ACL demonstration review form will include a section addressing these issues and papers flagged for ethical concerns by reviewers will be further reviewed by an ethics committee. Note that an ethical considerations section is not required, but papers working with sensitive data or on sensitive tasks that do not discuss these issues will not be accepted. Conversely, the mere inclusion of an ethical considerations section does not guarantee acceptance. In addition to acceptance or rejection, papers may receive a conditional acceptance recommendation. Camera-ready versions of papers designated as conditional accept will be re-reviewed by the ethics committee to determine whether the concerns have been adequately addressed. Please read the ethics FAQ (shared with the main conference) for more guidance on some problems to look out for and key concerns to consider relative to the code of ethics.

Demonstration Co-chairs

●    Valerio Basile (University of Turin, Italy)
●    Zornitsa Kozareva (Facebook AI Research, USA)
●    Sanja Štajner (Symanto Research, Germany)

Contact: acl2022demochairs@gmail.com