AAAI-05 Workshop on Question Answering in Restricted Domains

July 10, 2005
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

www.clt.mq.edu.au/Events/Conferences/aaai05/

Workshop Program [PDF]

Abstract of the invited presentation

AAAI-05

Important Dates

Submission: April 20, 2005 closed
Notification: May 11, 2005 closed
Camera ready: May 18, 2005 closed
Workshop: July 10, 2005

Workshop Description

This one-day workshop will focus on the issues related to question answering in restricted domains. Restricted domains provide an interesting mix of challenges and opportunities that are yet to explore. For example, the limited data available makes it difficult to apply conventional question-answering techniques based on data redundancy and the specific terminology of some domains typically is not available in generic lexical resources. On the other hand, restricted domains enable the development of specific ontologies or knowledge bases that can be used for high-precision question answering tasks.

Note that there is an AAAI workshop on inference in textual question answering. If you are wondering what workshop your research fits best, please contact the organisers of any of these two workshops.

This workshop is a follow-up of the ACL 2005 workshop.

Topics

• Comparison between open-domain and restricted-domain QA
• Characterisation of types of restricted domains and type of technology required for QA on those domains
• Methodologies
• Tools and resources
• Description of specific restricted-domain QA systems
• Development of modules (e.g. document preselection, NE extraction, terminology extraction) for use in restricted-domain QA systems
• Portability of QA systems between different restricted domains
• Evaluation

Format of Workshop

The workshop includes an invited presentation, a set of full papers and short papers, and a final discussion panel.

The invited presenter will address some of the questions posed above. The emphasis is not so much about addressing the questions but about presenting a challenging topic that encourages discussion.

There will be full papers and short papers. The full papers will focus on the specific issues listed above, whereas the short papers can focus on system descriptions or provide small contributions to the workshop goals.

The discussion panel includes 5-minute statements from three leading researchers in different related areas of expertise. The panel will be followed by a discussion moderated by one of the workshop organisers.

Attendance

We expect an attendance of 25-50 people from the areas of question answering in open domains and restricted domains to allow for useful comparison and generalisation. To encourage discussion and participation, only invited people can attend. We therefore require potential participants that do not contribute with a paper to send an email to the workshop organisers with a one-page description of their interest in the topic and their position statements. The information will be used to organise the final workshop discussion session.

Submissiom Requirements

Submitted papers should describe original work, completed or in progress, rather than merely planned, and clearly indicate the current state of advancement of the work. No previously published papers should be submitted.

Authors should submit regular papers of maximum 10 pages or short papers of maximum 5 pages, including references and figures, following the AAAI technical reports guidelines. The review will not be blind.

Submissions must be in PS or PDF format only.

Submit to:

Diego Mollá
diego@ics.mq.edu.au

Macquarie University
Division of Information and Communication Sciences
Centre for Language Technology
Sydney, NSW 2109

Tel. +61 2 9850 9531
Fax  +61 2 9850 9551

Workshop Program

A PDF file is available with information about the program and the venue.

Workshop Chairs

• Diego Mollá, Macquarie University, Australia
• José Luis Vicedo, University of Alicante, Spain

Program Committee

• Marcus Ackermann, University of Leipzig, Germany
• Donna Harman, NIST, USA
• Graeme Hirst, University of Toronto, Canada
• Elizabeth Liddy, Syracuse University, USA
• Marc Light, University of Iowa, USA
• Maarten de Rijke, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• Horacio Rodríguez, Universitat de Catalunya, Spain
• Rolf Schwitter, Macquarie University, Australia
• Richard Sutcliffe, University of Limerick, Ireland
• Pierre Zweigenbaum, DIAM, France