CALL FOR NTCIR-13 ADDITIONAL PILOT TASK PROPOSALSNTCIR (NII Testbeds and Community for Information access Research) is a sesquiannual series ofevaluation conferences that mainly focuses on Asian language information access.
For NTCIR-13, nine tasks have been already accepted and their activity started. The nine tasks
include five core tasks (LifeLog-2, MedWeb, OpenLiveQ, QALab-3, and STC-2) and four pilot tasks(AKG, ECA, NAILS, and WWW). Since there are still many emerging problems in information
access research, we now call for additional pilot tasks.
Please note that financial support (i.e., seed funding) will not be provided to the accepted additionalpilot task. Otherwise, the task will be treated in the same way as the other pilot tasks in NTCIR13, and in its proceedings. Please feel free to contact the program co-chairs for any details of thetask organization at ntc13-pcc@nii.ac.jp .
Please submit your task proposal as a pdf file to “NTCIR-13 Additional Task Proposal” track(default) to https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ntcir12 by October 31, 2016 (UTC-12).

The additional pilot task proposals will be reviewed by the NTCIR-13 programmecommitee, following the schedule below:
NTCIR-13 TENTATIVE SCHEDULE
Oct 31, 2016

Task Proposals due

Dec 7, 2016

Acceptance Notification

Dec 15, 2016

Task registration due*Jan 2017

Dataset release*

Jan-Mar 2017

Dry run*Mar-July 2017

Formal run*Sep 1, 2017

Evaluation result releaseSep 1, 2017

Task overview paper release (draft)

Oct 1, 2017

Submission due of participant papers (draft)

Nov 1, 2017

Submission due of camera-ready papers

Dec 5-8, 2017

NTCIR-13 Conference & EVIA 2017 in NII, Tokyo(Those with * can be changed by each task)

DIFFERENCE FROM THE PAST NTCIR TASK PROPOSAL
lOrganizers at NTCIR-12 may keep the task name (e.g. TASKNAME-2) as long as the task
includes improvement based on the previous rounds.

lPlease describe the data with as much detail as possible so that we can help your data release
after the proposal is accepted. In the past NTCIR, it took much time to create memorandums,
which sometimes slowed down the task organization.

lThe proposal should not exceed five pages (four pages for the main part and appendix andone page for the data) in A4 single-column format.

l

We encourage applicants tol

Emphasize real-world applications of the proposed task by using real-world data, real tasks,
and addressing real-world problems.

lAddress a challenge in information access technology evaluation such as a large amount ofassessments required for evaluation, privacy-preserving use of proprietary data, and live testwith real users.

TASK PROPOSAL FORMATThe proposal should not exceed five pages in A4 single-column format. The first four pages should
contain the main part and appendix, and the last page should contain only description about thedata used in the task. Please describe the data with as much detail as possible so that we can help
your data release after the proposal is accepted. In the past NTCIR, it took much time to create
memorandums, which sometimes slowed down the task organization.
Main part: Task name and short name; Abstract; Motivation; Methodology; Expected results
Appendix: Names and contact information of the organizers; Prospective participants; Budgetplanning; Schedule; Data to be used and/or constructed

REVIEW CRITERIAl

Importance of the task to the information access community and to the societylTimeliness of the tasklOrganizers’ commitment in ensuring a successful tasklFinancial sustainability (self-sustainable tasks are encouraged)lSoundness of the evaluation methodologylLanguage scope

NTCIR GENERAL CHAIRSCharles L. A. Clarke (University of Waterloo, Canada)
Noriko Kando (NII, Japan)
Tetsuya Sakai (Waseda University, Japan)

NTCIR-13 PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Tat-Seng Chua (National University of Singapore, Singapore)
Nicola Ferro (University of Padua, Italy)
Kalervo Jarvelin (University of Tampere, Finland)
Gareth Jones (Dublin City University, Ireland)
Chin-Yew Lin (Microsoft Research Asia, China)
Maarten de Rijke (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Mark Sanderson (RMIT University, Australia)
Ian Soboroff (NIST, United States)
Yiqun Liu (Co-chair, Tsinghua University, China)
Makoto P. Kato (Co-chair, Kyoto University, Japan)