[IAPR-TC10] Newsletter 145 – April 2021

---

Call for contributions: feel free to contribute to TC10 newsletters, by sending any relevant news, event, notice, open position, dataset or link to us on iapr.tc10[at]gmail.com

---

1) Message from the TC10 Executive Committee

Dear TC10 members,

Traditionally, the TC10 leadership change after ICPR. During this winter, Jean-Christophe Burie has been appointed as the successor to Alicia Fornés. First of all, the TC10 Executive Committee would like to thank Alicia on behalf of the whole TC10 community, for the invaluable work done during her chairmanship the last two years and half. We would also like to thank Partha Pratim Roy for his service during these last years.

The new Executive Committee will be composed of:

– Chair: Jean-Christophe Burie, L3i, University of la Rochelle, FRANCE.
– Vice chair: Miki Ueno, Osaka Institute of Technology, JAPAN.
– Educational officer: K.C. Santosh, University of South Dakota, USA.
– Dataset curator: Pau Riba, Computer Vision Center, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, SPAIN.
– Communication officer: Christophe Rigaud, L3i, University of La Rochelle, FRANCE.
– Webmaster: Muhammad Muzzamil Luqman, L3i, University of la Rochelle, FRANCE.

Best regards,
The TC10 Executive Committee

---

2) Voting for Annual ICDAR

Over the past two years we have held numerous discussions about the evolution of our community. During 2020, with the help of a Task Force comprising a representative crosscut of members of our community, we identified key actions and defined a strategic plan for the document analysis and recognition community. Detailed information of the activity , including ways to participate, is available at the website: https://sites.google.com/view/darstrategy

We will keep working on this strategic plan over the next term and start implementing actions. However the opinion of our community is essential to take the right direction.

One of the key proposals of the Task Force is to ensure that there is a yearly opportunity to publish in a top quality forum, by holding our flagship CORE-A conference, ICDAR, every year, with a consistent calendar. This would be complemented with actions to increase scientific quality, increase participation, and strengthen industry-academia links among others, as described in the strategic plan.

Although in principle this is an action affecting only ICDAR, it is expected that it will have repercussions to the other events of TC10/TC11, therefore a holistic analysis is required, and we have already held numerous discussions both on the idea of an annual ICDAR, and on the possible ways it might affect DAS, ICFHR and GREC. You can see the discussions (and still contribute if you think anything is missing) here:
https://sites.google.com/view/darstrategy/discussions?authuser=0

We consider that this is now a mature topic, on which we have reflected a lot, and we need to choose a direction that will affect the planning of calls for bids for the next few years. The first decision should be on whether we want an annual, high-quality, ICDAR conference.

As you have subscribed to the TC10 newsletter, you have received a dedicated message inviting you to give you opinion and vote.

Jean-Christophe Burie, Alicia Forèz, TC10 Chair and past Chair
Faisal Shafait, Dimosthenis Karatzas, TC11 Chair and past Chair

---

3) Upcoming deadlines and events

2021

• Deadlines:
  • April 30, award nomination deadline ICDAR 2021
  • May 10, abstract submission deadline GREC 2021
  • May 15, doctoral consortium submission deadline ICDAR 2021
  • May 17, full paper submission deadline GREC 2021
  • June 10, paper submission deadline ACPR 2021
    
• Events:
  • September 5-6, workshop GREC 2021, Lausanne, Switzerland
  • September 5-10, conference ICDAR 2021, Lausanne, Switzerland
  • November 9-12, conference ACPR 2021, Jedu Island, Korea

2022 and later

• Events:
  • December 2022, conference ICFHR 2022, Hyderabad, India

---

4) 14th International Workshop on Graphics Recognition (GREC)

September 05-06, 2021
Lausanne, Switzerland
http://grec2021.univ-lr.fr/

GREC workshops provide an excellent opportunity for researchers and practitioners at all levels of experience to meet colleagues and to share new ideas and knowledge about graphics recognition methods. Graphics Recognition is a sub-field of document image analysis that deals with graphical entities in engineering drawings, comics, musical scores, sketches, maps, architectural plans, mathematical notation, tables, diagrams, etc.

The aim of this workshop is to maintain a very high level of interaction and creative discussions between participants, maintaining a “workshop” spirit, and not being tempted by a “mini-conference” model.

GREC 2021 will continue the tradition of past workshops held at the Penn State University (USA), Nancy (France), Jaipur (India), Kingston (Canada), Barcelona (Spain),, Hong Kong (China), Curitiba (Brazil), La Rochelle (France), Seoul (Corea), Lehigh (USA), Nancy (France), Kyoto (Japan) and Sydney (Australia).

The workshop will comprise several sessions dedicated to specific topics related to graphics in document analysis and graphic recognition. For each session, there will be an invited presentation describing the state of the art and stating the open questions for the session’s topic, followed by a number of short presentations that will contribute by proposing solutions to some of the questions or presenting results of the speaker’s work. Each session will be concluded by a panel discussion.

We encourage the authors to submit papers on the topics detailed below.

Topics

• Analysis and interpretation of graphical documents, such as: Engineering drawings, floor-plans, mathematical expressions, comics, maps, music scores, patents, diagrams, charts, tables, etc.
• Recognition of graphic elements, such as symbols, logos, stamps, drop-caps, drawings, etc.
• Identification and localization of graphical mark-ups and annotations in written documents.
• Raster-to-vector techniques.
• Graphics-based information retrieval.
• Historical graphics recognition and indexing.
• Forensics (Writer identification/verification) in graphic documents.
• Description of complete systems for interpretation of graphic documents.
• Datasets and performance evaluation in graphics recognition.
• Authoring, editing, storing and presentation systems for graphics multimedia documents.
• 3-D models from multiple 2-D views (line drawings).
• Digital ink processing.
• Sketch recognition and understanding.
• Camera-based graphics recognition.
• Graphics recognition in born digital documents.
• Analysis of graphics on new digital interfaces.
• Graphics detection and recognition in real scenes.
• Graphics analysis in medical images

Guidelines for authors

For this edition, authors are invited to submit two types of paper :

• Full papers describing complete works of research (12-15 pages). They will undergo a rigorous review process with a minimum of 2 reviews considering the originality of work.
• Short papers providing an opportunity to report on research in progress and to present novel positions on graphic recognition (up to 6 pages).

Accepted papers (full and short papers) will be published in a Springer LNCS volume dedicated to all ICDAR workshops.

The submitted papers will respect the same policy and conditions of ICDAR 2021 conference papers. Papers should be formatted according to the instructions and style files provided by Springer. The LaTeX template for LNCS can be downloaded here. It is also available on Overleaf.

You can also see the author instructions on ICDAR Website for the format or downloand the LNCS Guidelines for authors.

Important dates

• Submission deadline :
  • Abstract submission : May 10th, 2021 (hard deadline)
  • Full paper submission : May 17th, 2021 – 11:59PM Pacific Time Zone (hard deadline)
• Acceptance notification: June 20th, 2021
• Camera ready due: June 30th, 2021
• Workshop : September. 05th – 06th, 2021

More information at: http://grec2021.univ-lr.fr/

General Chair : Jean-Christophe Burie
Program Co-Chair : Richard Zanibbi, Motoi Iwata and Pau Riba

---

5) ICDAR 2021 Call for Nomination Awards

Nominations Due: April 30, 2021

The IAPR/ICDAR Award Program is an established program designed to recognize individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the field of Document Analysis and Recognition in one or more of the following areas:

• Research
• Training of students
• Research/Industry interaction
• Service to the community

Every two years, two awards categories are presented. Namely, theIAPR/ICDAR Young Investigator Award (less than 40 years old at the time the award is made), and the IAPR/ICDAR Outstanding Achievements Award. Each award will consist of a token gift and a suitably inscribed certificate. The recipient of the Outstanding Achievements award will be invited to give the opening keynote speech at the ICDAR 2021 conference, introduced by the recipient from the previous conference.

Nominations are invited for the ICDAR 2021 Awards in both categories. The nomination pack should include the following:

1. A nominating letter (1 page) including a brief citation to be included in the certificate.
2. Supporting letters (1 page each) from 3 active researchers from at least 3 different countries.

A nomination is usually put forward by a researcher (preferably from a different institution than the nominee) who is knowledgeable of the scientific achievements of the nominee, and who organizes letters of support.

The submission procedure is strictly confidential, and self-nominations are not allowed.

Please send nomination packs electronically to the TC10 and TC11 chairs:
Dr Faisal SHAFAIT, TC11 Chair (faisal.shafait[at]seecs.edu.pk)
Dr Jean-Christophe BURIE, TC10 Chair (jcburie[at]univ-lr.fr)

The deadline for receiving nominations is April 30, 2021 but early submissions are strongly encouraged.

---

6) ICDAR 2021 call for Doctoral Consortium

In 2011, the first Doctoral Consortium in the Document Analysis community was organized in conjunction with the International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR). This has led to successful successor events at ICDAR 2013, ICDAR 2015, ICDAR 2017 and ICDAR 2019. The tradition of having a Doctoral Consortium as a satellite event to the ICDAR main conference will furtherbe continued at ICDAR 2021 in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The goal of the ICDAR 2021 Doctoral Consortium is to create an opportunity for Ph.D. students to test their research ideas, present their current progress and future plans, and receive constructive criticism and insights related to their future work and career perspectives. A mentor (a senior researcher who is active in the field) will be assigned to each student to provide individual feedback. In addition, students will have the opportunity to present an overview of their research plan during a special poster session.

Participation in the ICDAR 2021 Doctoral Consortium will be limited to 25 students. Prospective participants are encouraged to submit their application by May 15th, 2021. The Doctoral Consortium Chairs will then review all applications received. Preference will be given to students who are at a stage in their studies most likely to benefit (i.e., they have identified a research direction and published some initial results, but the thesis is not yet set in stone).

Participation to the Doctoral Consortium will be free for all accepted students, i.e., there will be no extra registration fees!

The ICDAR 2021 Doctoral Consortium will take place the day before the main conference, i.e., on Wednesday, September 07.

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE

Students willing to participate should submit a participation package in a SINGLE pdf file. The submission package should be prepared using the LaTeX or MS Word templates (see ICDAR DC webpage at https://icdar2021.org/calls/doctoral-consortium/ ) and should contain the following information:

• Student’s name
• University
• Title of your thesis
• Supervisor of the thesis
• Starting and expected finalization date of the PhD.
• short research plan (1-2 pages about the work).
• short CV (1-2 pages).

The research plan should contain an overview of the PhD topic, the steps made so far (including a list of publications), and the actions planned before finishing the PhD, especially novel research ideas to be pursued.

Submission should be done before May 15th, 2021 to https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=dcicdar2021

IMPORTANT DATES:

• Submission deadline: May 15th, 2021
• Acceptance notification and Mentor assignment: May 25th, 2021
• Mentoring period : from May 26th to July 31st, 2021
• Final material due: August 1st, 2021
• Doctoral Consortium: September 7th, 2021

We are looking forward to your participation!

Nibal Nayef and Jean-Christophe Burie
Doctoral Consortium Chairs

---

7) Open call for expressions of interest for organizing future TC10 or TC11 events (repost)

Due to the current pandemic situation, and understanding the difficulties in putting together a complete bid under the current circumstances, the TC10 and TC11 teams have opted not to open specific calls for organizing any future events planned for after 2023.

Nevertheless, we would like to probe the community, and invite our colleagues to start thinking about whether they would like to potentially organize a future TC10 or TC11 event (e.g. conference, workshop, summer school).

We will be gathering expressions of interest for a few months. These are not meant to be full proposals, but rather an informal message to the TC10/TC11 chair, indicating a possible interest to organize one of the future events.

If you think you can take on the organization of such a future event, please send us a quick message, indicating if possible where, when and which event you would be interested in organizing.

Dr Faisal Shafait, TC11 Chair (faisal.shafait[at]seecs.edu.pk)
Dr Jean-Christophe Burie, TC10 Chair (jcburie[at]univ-lr.fr)

---