IAPR TC-11 (READING SYSTEMS) NEWSLETTER July, 2017 ======================================================================== IAPR TC-11 HOMEPAGE: http://www.iapr-tc11.org Online Version: http://www.iapr-tc11.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=IAPR-TC11:_Newsletter_2017/07 TABLE OF CONTENTS: - Message from the Editor - Dates and Deadlines - Deadlines - Upcoming Conference Dates - New Datasets - Calls for Papers - GREC 2017: Submission Deadline Extension - 4th International Workshop on Historical Document Imaging and Processing - DAS 2018 - ICDAR 2017 - Student Travel Awards - Workshops - Competitions - IJDAR: Special Issue and Discount - Special Issue: Deep Learning for Document Analysis and Recognition - Discount for IAPR Members - Careers - PhD Position in Computerized Image Processing (Uppsala University, Sweeden) Message from the Editor ======================= Paper decisions for ICDAR 2017 are now complete. There were 400 paper submissions, of which 214 were accepted (acceptance rate: 54%). Our thanks to all members of the community who submitted their work, and to everyone who has contributed to the paper reviewing and organization for our flagship conference. Please note that there will be a special workshop at ICDAR 2017 concerned with exploring future directions for Document Analysis and Recognition research, which will be free of charge for participants — we hope to see you there. Details may be found [online](http://u-pat.org/ICDAR2017/program_special.html). Here are additional points of note regarding ICDAR 2017. - **New!! Student Travel Awards.** Applications for ICDAR 2017 Student Travel Awards are now [open](http://u-pat.org/ICDAR2017/attend_financial_assistance.php). Details may be found elsewhere in this newsletter. - **Workshops and Competitions.** Nine workshops on a variety of topics will be held at ICDAR 2017, many of which are still accepting papers ([ICDAR Workshops](http://u-pat.org/ICDAR2017/program_workshops.html)). Competitions run for ICDAR 2017 are listed below; details may be found in competition web pages ([ICDAR Competitions](http://u-pat.org/ICDAR2017/program_competitions.html)). - **Tutorials.** Three tutorials on state-of-the-art work in reading text in natural scenes, graph-based pattern recognition/document analysis, and word spotting will be offered at ICDAR 2017 ([ICDAR Tutorials](http://u-pat.org/ICDAR2017/program_tutorials.html)). Regarding upcoming conferences, calls for Papers for DAS 2018 and ICFHR 2018 are also available. Please also note that the submission deadline for the IJDAR special issue on Deep Learning in Document Recognition is fast approaching (Aug. 31st). **Andreas Fischer (TC-11 Dataset Curator)** () Calls for Papers ================ GREC 2017: Submission Deadline Extension ---------------------------------------- Important Dates Deadline (Extended): August 7, 2017 **Web Page:** The Twelfth IAPR International Workshop on Graphics Recognition (GREC 2017), organized by the IAPR TC-10 (Technical Committee on Graphics Recognition), will take place just before the 14th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR). **Due to a number of requests, the deadline for GREC abstract submissions (2 pages) has been extended to August 7th.** Please consider submitting abstracts describing your work related to graphics recognition, including work-in-progress. Details may be found in the workshop web pages (link provided above). **Andreas Fischer, Workshop Co-Chair** () DAS 2018 (repost) ----------------- **13th IAPR International Workshop on Document Analysis Systems (DAS 2018)** *April 24-27 2018, Vienna, Austria* **Important Dates** Full papers due: Nov. 20, 2017 * Decision notification: Jan. 15, 2018 Short papers due: Jan. 19, 2018 * Decision notification: Jan. 31, 2018 Tutorial proposals due: Nov. 30, 2017 **Overview.** DAS 2018 is the 13th edition of the 100% participation single-track IAPR sponsored workshop focusing on system-level issues and approaches in document analysis and recognition. The workshop comprises invited speaker presentations, oral, poster, tutorial and demo sessions as well as working group discussions. DAS 2018 will be organized at TU Wien (Vienna University of Technology), in the heart of Vienna’s city center, which places the attendees within walking distance to a large variety of world-famous historical and cultural attractions. The program will include long and short papers, posters and demonstrations of working or prototype systems. All submissions will undergo a rigorous review process with a minimum of 3 reviews considering the originality of work, the quality of research or analysis of experience, the relevance to document analysis systems, and quality of presentation. Information regarding paper submissions is provided below. **Note:** Submission of a paper involves a commitment that, if accepted, one or more authors will attend the workshop. **Full Papers.** Full papers should describe complete works of original research. Authors are invited to submit original, unpublished research papers that are not being considered in another form, up to 6 pages length. **Short Papers.** Short papers provide an opportunity to report on research in progress and to present novel positions on document analysis systems. Authors may submit short papers (up to 2 pages in length). Short papers will also undergo review and will appear in an extra booklet, not in the official DAS 2018 proceedings. **Demonstrations.** DAS 2018 seeks public demonstrations of novel systems, to be presented to the workshop as a whole during breaks between paper sessions. Prospective demonstrators should submit a two-page summary of the system to be demonstrated. Demonstration proposals will undergo review and summaries of accepted demonstrations will appear in the extra DAS 2018 booklet, as in the case of short papers. For Topics & Technologies and Commitees, please see the DAS 2018 website: **Contact:** **Masakazu Iwamura, (Financial Chair, ICDAR 2017)** Workshops --------- Nine workshops will be offered at ICDAR 2017. Please see below a list of these Workshops and the names of the corresponding organizers. Web pages and submission deadlines for each Workshop may be found online: . **HDI: First International Workshop on Human-Document Interaction** Organizers: Jean-Christophe Burie, Mickaël Coustaty, Dimosthenis Karatzas and Koichi Kise **CBDAR: 7th International Workshop on Camera-Based Document Analysis and Recognition** Organizers: Lluis Gomez-Bigorda, Muhammad Muzzamil Luqman and Dimosthenis Karatzas **MANPU: 2nd International Workshop on coMics Analysis, Processing and Understanding** Organizers: Jean-Christophe Burie, Toshihiko Yamasaki and Motoi Iwata **ICDAR-WML: Workshop on Machine Learning** Organizers: Umapada Pal and Eric Granger **HIP: 4th International Workshop on Historical Document Imaging and Processing** Organizers: Andreas Fischer, Angelika Garz, Kengo Terasawa and Bill Barrett **IWCDF: 1st International Workshop on Computational Document Forensics** Organizers: Jean-Marc Ogier, Utpal Garain and Apostolos Antonacopoulos **ICDAR-OST: 1st International Workshop on Open Services and Tools for Document Analysis** Organizers: Marcel Würsch and Joseph Chazalon **GREC: 12th International Workshop on Graphics Recognition** Organizers: Alicia Fornés and Bart Lamiroy **MOCR: 6th International Workshop on Multilingual OCR** Organizers: Venu Govindaraju, Prem Natarajan, Santanu Chaudhury and Srirangaraj Setlur We are looking forward to your submissions for these Workshops. We also solicit your gracious support in circulating this information among your students, colleagues and scientific/research community to give it higher visibility. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ **Michael Blumenstein & Umapada Pal, ICDAR-2017 Workshop Co-Chairs** (, ) Competitions ------------ HANDWRITTEN HISTORICAL DOCUMENT LAYOUT RECOGNITION - Competition on Baseline Detection in Archival Documents: - Competition on Layout Analysis for Challenging Medieval Manuscripts: - Competition on Historical Book Analysis: HISTORICAL HANDWRITTEN SCRIPT ANALYSIS - Competition on the Classification of Medieval Handwritings in Latin Script: - Competition on Historical Document Writer Identification: - Competition on Multi-script Writer Identification Using LAMIS-MSHD and CERUG Databases: CHARACTER/WORD SPOTTING - Competition on Query-by-Example Glyph Spotting of Southeast Asian Palm Leaf Manuscript Images: - Handwritten Keyword Spotting Competition: HANDWRITING RECOGNITION - Competition on Handwritten Text Recognition on the READ Dataset: - Competition on Information Extraction in Historical Handwritten Records: DOCUMENT IMAGE BINARIZATION - Document Image Binarization Competition: DOCUMENT RECOGNITION (LAYOUT ANALYSIS & TEXT RECOGNITION) - Competition on Recognition of Documents with Complex Layouts: - Competition on Early Indian Printed Documents: - Competition on Page Object Detection in Document Images: DOCUMENT DOCUMENT RECONSTRUCTION - Smartphone-captured Document Image Reconstruction from Multiple Views: POST OCR CORRECTION - Competition on Post-OCR Text Correction: ROBUST READING COMPETITIONS - Competition on Reading Chinese Text in the Wild: - Challenge on COCO-Text: - Challenge on Text Extraction from Biomedical Literature Figures: - Challenge on Robust Reading Challenge on Omnidirectional Video: - Competition on Multi-lingual scene text detection and script identification: TEXT IN VIDEO - Competition on Arabic Text Detection and Recognition in Multiresolution Video Frames (AcTiVComp17) - Competition on Video Script Identification: http://[www.ict.griffith.edu.au/cvsi2017](www.ict.griffith.edu.au/cvsi2017) FORENSICS - Competition on File Type and Altered Image Identification: MISCELLANEOUS COMPETITIONS - Competition on Multi-font and Multi-size Digitally Represented Arabic Text: IJDAR: Special Issue and Discount ================================= 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.](http://www.springer.com/cda/content/document/cda_downloaddocument/Special+Issue+on+Deep+Learning+for+DAR.pdf?SGWID=0-0-45-1600550-p1122349) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ **Koichi Kise, Daniel Lopresti and Simone Marinai, IJDAR Editors-in-Chief** ( , , ) Discount for IAPR Members (repost) ---------------------------------- 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/intjrnlsub.php](http://www.iapr.org/publications/intjournal.php) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ **Koichi Kise, Daniel Lopresti and Simone Marinai, IJDAR Editors-in-Chief** ( , , ) Careers ======= PhD Position in Computerized Image Processing (Uppsala University, Sweeden) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Important Dates Deadline: August 20, 2017 **Description:** The PhD student will be working in a project aiming at analysis of handwritten text manuscripts using computational methods from image analysis and linguistics. It sets out to develop a manuscript analysis technology providing automatic tools for large-scale transcription, linguistic analysis, digital palaeography and generic data mining of historical manuscripts. The PhD student will focus on the development of methods for semi-automatic transcription, where new word spotting and transcription techniques will be developed. The idea is to develop a useful transcript tool that can be used by researchers in digital humanities but also for crowd sourcing. This will involve both the use of state of the art machine learning techniques and GUI development for the transcription tool as well as applying state of the art HCI methods. **Qualifications:** Candidates must have an MSc degree in computer Science or a related area relevant to the PhD topics. Good programming skills are required and expertise in digital image processing/analysis and machine learning is meriting. The PhD position is highly interdisciplinary and an understanding and/or interest in digital humanities applications is meriting. Good communication skills in English, both spoken and written, are required. **Appointment period:** The position is for four years, but may be extended by teaching and department duties (at most 20%). The PhD education also includes participation in courses related to the research subject. **How to apply:** The applicant should include a letter describing her- or himself and motivating why applying for the position, relevant qualifications, and research interests. The application should also include a CV, copies of relevant certificates, degrees and grades, the MSc thesis and other documents (e.g., letter(s) of recommendation and a list of reference persons). We would also like to know the earliest possible date for starting. **Additional Details Regarding the institution, research group, and application process may be found [online here](https://www.uu.se/en/about-uu/join-us/details/?positionId=160472).** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ **Anders Hast (Associate Professor, Uppsala University)** Contributions and Subscriptions ================================== **Call for Contributions:** To contribute news items, please send a short email to the editor, Richard Zanibbi (mailto:rxzvcs@cs.rit.edu). Contributions might include conference and workshop announcements or 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: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=iapr-tc11&A=1 To manage your subscription, please visit the mailing list homepage: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=IAPR-TC11 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ IAPR TC-11 HOMEPAGE: http://www.iapr-tc11.org The IAPR is the International Association for Pattern Recognition. IAPR's Technical Committee No. 11 (TC-11) includes researchers and practitioners working with Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and more generally the analysis and recognition of information in documents.