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Call for Participation
Handwritten Scanned Document Retrieval Challenge @ ImageCLEF 2016
http://imageclef.org/2016/handwritten

*Note to text retrieval researchers:* Text-only processing is enough to 
participate,
no need to do image processing or handwritten recognition.

We cordially invite you to participate in a new evaluation campaign 
aimed at the
development of systems for textual-query retrieval from historical 
handwritten
collections. The evaluation will be characterized by the following key
challenges:
   - Multi-word queries.
   - Finding broken words due to hyphenation.
   - Queries with words not seen in the training data.
   - Queries with zero relevant results.
   - Results in the transitions between pages.
   - Proximity searching.

The evaluation tries to allow easy participation from different research
communities, with the aim of having synergies and providing different 
ideas and
solutions to the problems being addressed. In particular, we hope to have
participation at least from groups working on: handwritten text recognition,
image-based keyword spotting and text retrieval. The primary
training/development information will consist in the original page 
images and
transcripts. This can be directly used by researchers working on keyword
spotting. Moreover, word bounding boxes will be provided for the 
convenience of
groups that work on query-by-example keyword spotting. In addition to the
original page images and transcripts, plain text n-best recognition 
lists will
be provided, to allow easy participation of researchers that normally 
work with
text only.

The participants will have a chance to submit a paper describing their
systems, which will be peer reviewed and if accepted, published in the 
CEUR-WS
proceedings. Furthermore, the groups of the best performing systems will be
invited to give an oral presentation at CLEF 2016 and others will be 
given the
option of presenting a poster. Attendance to CLEF is not mandatory (though
recommended) for participating or the papers being published.

This challenge is being organized as part of ImageCLEF, a lab of CLEF 2016
(http://clef2016.clef-initiative.eu).

Any questions or comments you may have, feel free to contact us. For more
details on the evaluation please visit
   http://imageclef.org/2016/handwritten

Schedule:
   15.11.2015: registration opens (until 22.04.2016)
   16.12.2015: release of training/development data
   15.03.2016: release of test data
   01.05.2016: deadline for submission of runs by the participants
   15.05.2016: release of processed results by the task organizers
   25.05.2016: deadline for submission of working notes papers
   17.06.2016: notification of acceptance of the working notes papers
   01.07.2016: camera ready working notes papers
   05.-08.09.2016: CLEF 2016, Évora, Portugal

Organizing Committee:

Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain
- Joan Puigcerver <[log in to unmask]>
- Alejandro H. Toselli <[log in to unmask]>
- Joan Andreu Sánchez <[log in to unmask]>
- Enrique Vidal <[log in to unmask]>
- Mauricio Villegas <[log in to unmask]>