Guidelines for Participating Teams

Guidelines for Participating Teams 

Participation

Q: Who can participate in the challenge?
A: The challenge is open to all researchers, practitioners, and teams from academia and industry interested in Arabic NLP and Islamic studies. There are no restrictions on team size or affiliation.

Q: Is there a fee to participate in a task?
A: No, participation is completely free but at least one team member should pay to register for the conference.

Q: Can I participate in multiple shared tasks (separate competitions)?
A: Yes, you can participate in multiple different tasks.

Q: Do I need to write a paper?
A: Yes, if you register and request the dataset, you agree to submit a paper. It's not just encouraged—it's a binding commitment you make when receiving the data.

Q: What happens if I register but don't submit a paper?
A: This is strictly prohibited. You agree to register and submit a paper when requesting the dataset. Abandoning the task after receiving data may result in banning participants from future participation.

Q: Can I use external resources to train my system?
A: Yes, participants are allowed to use any external data for training or fine-tuning their models, provided that it is publicly available and legally accessible. All external resources must be clearly documented in your submission paper.

Q: What does "evaluation period" mean?
A: The evaluation period is the time window in which the official part of each task competition takes place. Task organizers will release evaluation data to participants at the beginning of the evaluation period, and system outputs will be due before the end of the evaluation period.

Paper Submission

Q: What is the paper format?
A: Shared task papers must follow the format for short papers at ArabicNLP 2025. Papers must follow official EMNLP (ACL) LaTeX or Word templates, be up to 4 pages (excluding unlimited references). Check the dedicated paper submission guidelines URL for more details:
https://github.com/acl-org/acl-style-files

Q: How should the paper title be formatted?
A: Use this format: at :
Example: "Scholarly at XYZ Shared Task: LLMs in Detection for Identifying Manipulative Strategies"

Q: Must I cite the task overview paper?
A: Yes, each team is required to cite the shared task overview paper in their system paper.

Q: Must someone from my team attend the conference?
A: Yes, at least one of the shared task team members should register and attend the conference.

Q: Must papers be presented at the conference?
A: Yes, all accepted papers must be presented at the conference (in-person or virtual). Papers without at least one presenting author registered by the early registration deadline may be subject to desk rejection.

Q: Do I need an OpenReview account?
A: Yes, all participants and organizers are required to create an OpenReview account.

Q: Are the papers anonymous?
A: No, shared task papers (both system and overview papers) are not anonymous.

Q: What happens if I exceed the page limit or miss required sections?
A: Submissions that exceed length requirements will be desk rejected.

Q: Will I need to review other papers?
A: Yes, shared task teams are expected to serve as reviewers, and their reviews will be checked by one member of the shared task organizers.

Q: Can I post my paper on arXiv?
A: Yes, authors are free to submit papers to arXiv at any time. Since papers are not anonymous, this won't interfere with the review process.

Q: Can I make changes for the camera-ready version?
A: No additions/revisions or name changes are allowed after the review period for the camera-ready version.

Q: What if my research raises ethical concerns?
A: If your research raises ethical considerations (e.g., potential for misuse), these should be discussed in the paper.

Q: Should I release my code?
A: You are highly encouraged to release the code or data used and include the URL in the paper. This promotes reproducibility.