Call for Papers

Submission website: https://softconf.com/emnlp2022/NLPforPositiveImpact2022/

Important Dates

• (Submission channel 1) Latest submission deadline to softconf: Sept 7, 2022

• Softconf papers assigned to reviewers: Sept 9, 2022

• Softconf reviews due: Oct 2, 2022

• (Submission channel 2; alternative) Latest ARR commitment deadline: Oct 2, 2022 (As the ARR site explains, authors can commit to venues when they have their reviews and meta reviews. By Oct 2, you need to "commit" your ARR paper through softconf, like the EMNLP 2022 main conference did).

• Notification of Acceptance: Oct 9, 2022

• Camera-Ready Papers Due: Oct 16, 2022

• Workshop proceedings compiled: Nov 16, 2022

• Workshop Date: Dec 7, 2022

All deadlines are 11:59PM (Anywhere on Earth time)

Call for Papers (2022 Workshop)

The widespread and indispensable use of language-oriented AI systems presents new opportunities to have positive social impact. NLP technologies are starting to mature to the point where they could have an even broader impact, supporting the UN sustainability goals by helping to address big problems such as poverty, hunger, healthcare, education, inequality, COVID-19 and climate change.

Our workshop aims to promote innovative NLP research that will positively impact society, focusing on responsible methods and new applications. We will encourage submissions from areas including (but not limited to):

• Work that grounds the impact of NLP: Beyond developing a better-performing NLP model, can we make a step further to connect the model to actual social impact? Example directions can include: case studies of real-world deployments; or improving the deployment and maintenance of NLP models in practice. 

In addition to commonly recognized NLP for social good areas such as NLP for healthcare, mental well-being, and many others, we also call for work on neglected areas such as NLP for poverty, hunger, energy, climate change, among others. 

We also highly value work that builds on interdisciplinary expertise, and encourages submissions of case studies or worked examples that seek to expand the social impact of NLP through collaboration with other fields  (e.g., philanthropy, social science, political science, economics, HCI).

• Work that guides researchers in NLP for Social Good: Can we provide insights and guidance to the field? Example directions include: measures of social impact; automatic identification of various social needs, their corresponding sizes and demographics of people affected; position papers to propose promising new tasks or directions that the field should pursue; literature review of a subfield; philosophical discussions of what social good is; approaches to interdisciplinary collaboration; user study designs, user surveys; ethical considerations, and other related topics.

Note that we want submissions to our workshop to have some distinctive features of social good implications, beyond a general paper on NLP. We will require each submission to discuss the ethical and societal implications of their work, and encourage a discussion of what "positive impact" means in the work. We also highly encourage the paper to have non-NLP co-authors who are domain experts.

We welcome applications as reviewers for our next workshop in 2022 (apply through this Google Form as a reviewer). You can email us if you have questions about the workshop

Author Guidelines

All submissions must follow the EMNLP 2022 style files and formatting. Papers must have 4-8 pages (inclusive) of main contents. Main content means any sections from the abstract, introduction, ..., to the conclusion. Aligned with the policy of EMNLP, there is no length limit for sections after the main content, namely sections such as "Limitations" and "Ethical Considerations", references, supplementary materials, or appendices. Upon acceptance, authors will be allowed up to 9 pages of main contents.

You can submit original research work or a summary of research activities done in the direction of NLP for Positive Impact. You can present original completed work, a case study, a negative result, an opinion piece, or an interesting application nugget. More details on topics relevant to this workshop are included in the CFP above.

The review process will be double-blinded. Submissions themselves must not identify authors or their affiliations. Submissions will be desk-rejected if they violate the style formatting requirements or reveal any author identity information. 

Accepted papers will be presented during the workshop as either oral presentations or posters, determined by the program committee.

Archival, non-archival, and multiple submissions policy

For the archival process, authors must state clearly on the submission site whether they wish this work to be archival on the ACL anthology or non-archival. Only work that is not submitted to other venues is eligible for archive.  If the work has been previously accepted to another venue, please provide the name of that venue, and note that you can only opt for a non-archival submission. The acceptance information at other venues will be treated as confidential during the review process.

More details on multiple submissions:

• Other EMNLP workshops: to best save reviewers’ efforts, we do not allow submissions to multiple EMNLP workshops.

• For future venues after our workshop: we have a non-archival track which you can choose when submitting your paper. This way, if you want to submit your work later to another conference/journal, it will be perfectly fine. 

• For EMNLP: See below.

Special requirement if your paper is also submitted to EMNLP 2022:

• Note that our submission deadline is before  the notification date of EMNLP 2022. If you have submitted to the EMNLP main conference, then you can only choose the non-archival track. After acceptance to our workshop, our website will display your paper title, and provide a link to your formal ACL anthology webpage in the EMNLP 2022 proceedings (if your paper is accepted at EMNLP).

• More details for EMNLP Findings paper: By October 6, 2022, the EMNLP Program Chairs will provide a list of 150-200 papers accepted to Findings of EMNLP, and they will arrange Findings papers to be presented at workshops. No need to directly submit to us on softconf.

• If your paper has not been submitted to the EMNLP 2022 main conference or Findings, then you are eligible for both the archival and non-archival tracks of our workshop.

Ethical and societal implications

Each submission should discuss the ethical and societal implications of the work. We encourage authors to also include a discussion of what "positive impact" means to them or to the field of NLP. We encourage authors to include this discussion throughout the intro/body of their paper, but will also allow an additional "Ethical and societal implications" section that does not count towards the page limit (similar to the EMNLP "ethics" sections).

Anonymity period / double-blind reviewing

We do not have an anonymity deadline, so you are free to post your paper submission online / on preprint servers at any time. We simply ask that you are thoughtful about publicizing/posting your submission so that it minimizes the chances of compromising the double-blind reviewing process. For example, avoid tagging your arXiv paper as a submission to NLP4PositiveImpact, or avoid posting your paper right before or right after the submission deadline (those are just guidelines, not hard rules).

Contact

Should you have any questions, please feel free to email us.