# IAPR TC-11 (READING SYSTEMS) NEWSLETTER
## June, 2018
**Online, phone-friendly version:** [June 2018 Newsletter]().
We hope that the Summer School is a great success, and look forward to
seeing a number of you in Niagara Falls and Beijing in August. Take care
until then.
*Join us!* If you are not already a member of the TC-11 community,
please consider joining the [TC11 mailing
list](https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=iapr-tc11&A=1).
**Follow us on Twitter (iapr\_tc11):**
**Richard Zanibbi, TC-11 Communications Officer**
( )
Dates and Deadlines
===================
Deadlines
---------
- **July 1, 2018** Call for bids to host ICFHR 2022
- **July 1, 2018** Papers due for ICPR Workshop on Computational
Forensics ([Call for Submission](http://iwcf2018.univ-lr.fr))
- **July 15, 2018** Call for bids to host DAS 2022
- **July 15, 2017** Abstracts due for WoRMS ([Call for
Submissions](https://sites.google.com/view/worms2018/call-for-papers))
Upcoming Conferences and Events
-------------------------------
**2018**
- [SSDA
2018](https://apps.univ-lr.fr/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Colloque.woa/1/wa/colloque?code=2141).
TC10/TC11 Summer School on Document Analysis and Recognition, La
Rochelle, France (July 2-6, 2018)
- [ICFHR 2018](https://icfhr2018.org). Niagara Falls, USA (August
5-8, 2018)
- [ICPR 2018](http://www.icpr2018.org). Beijing, China (August
20-24, 2018)
- [DocEng 2018](https://doceng.org/doceng2018). Halifax, Canada
(August 28-31, 2018)
- [WoRMS 2018](https://sites.google.com/view/worms2018). Paris, France
(Sept. 20, 2018)
**2019 and Later**
- [ICDAR 2019](http://www.icdar2019.org), Sydney, Australia (September
22-25, 2019)
- [ICFHR 2020](http://www.icfhr2020.org). Dortmund, Germany (September
8-10, 2020)
Calls for Proposals
===================
Call for Proposals to Host ICFHR 2022 (repost)
----------------------------------------------
**Important Dates**
July 1, 2018 Proposal submission deadline
**Overview.** Continuing a long tradition, the international research
community plans to gather in Niagara Falls, USA, for the 16th
International Conference on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition on
August 5-8, 2016 (http://icfhr2018.org). In keeping with the practice of
the community, proposals are now being solicited for hosting ICFHR 2022,
the 18th International Conference on Frontiers in Handwriting
Recognition.
ICFHR is the premier event for identifying, encouraging, and exchanging
ideas in handwriting recognition research, as well as for promoting
novel applications at the frontiers of this important field. The
single-track conference brings together leading researchers and
practitioners in on-line and off-line handwriting recognition.
The series of the ICFHR conferences is a continuation of the ten IWFHRs
(Montreal 1990, Chateau de Bonas 1991, Buffalo 1993, Taipei 1994,
Colchester 1996, Taejon 1998, Amsterdam 2000, Niagara on the Lake 2002,
Tokyo 2004, La Baule 2006). Previous ICFHR conferences were held in
Montreal 2008, Kolkata 2010, Bari 2012, Crete 2014, and Shenzhen 2016.
The 17th International Conference on Frontiers in Handwriting
Recognition, ICFHR 2020, is scheduled to be held in Dortmund, Germany,
on September 8-10, 2020.
**Proposals.** Individuals and groups who are interested in handwriting
recognition research are invited to submit proposals for organizing and
hosting ICFHR 2022. According to the normal rotation, the year 2022
would see the conference located somewhere in Asia, but proposals from
other locales are encouraged as well.
Teams interested in making a proposal should express their interest to
do so as soon as possible. Finalized proposals should be sent to:
Dimosthenis Karatzas, TC-11 Chair, , and Masakazu
Iwamura, TC-11 Vice Chair, .
In addition, proposers should be prepared to make a brief presentation
to the community during a special session at ICFHR 2018 after which a
vote will be taken to determine the winning bid ([ICFHR 2018
Program](http://icfhr2018.org/program.html)) on the last day of the
conference.
**Dimosthenis Karatzas (TC11 Chair) and Mazakazu Iwamura (TC11
Vice-chair)**
( , )
Call for Proposals to Host DAS 2020 (repost)
--------------------------------------------
**Important Dates**
July 15, 2018 Proposal submission deadline
**Overview.** Following the successful organisation of the 13th IAPR
International Workshop on Document Analysis Systems in Vienna (Austria)
by General Chairs Robert Sablatnig and Florian Kleber, we are now
soliciting proposals for organising and hosting DAS 2020.
The DAS workshop is one of the signature events of TC-11. DAS 2020 will
build on the tradition established by past DAS workshops held in
Kaiserslautern, Germany (1994), Malvern, PA (1996), Nagano, Japan
(1998), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2000), Princeton, NJ (2002), Florence,
Italy (2004), Nelson, New Zealand (2006), Nara, Japan (2008), Boston, MA
(2010), and Gold Coast, Australia (2012), Tours-Loire Valley, France
(2014), Santorini, Greece (2016), and Vienna, Austria (2018).
**Proposals.** Individuals and groups interested in Document Analysis
Systems are invited to submit proposals for organizing and hosting DAS
2020. The event will preferably take place in late summer/fall, but is
not limited to this period. Extra care should be taken that other events
of the community taking place during the same year (e.g. ICPR and
ICFHR).
The submission deadline is July 15th, 2018. Proposals should be
submitted to the TC11 chair (Dimosthenis Karatzas) and vice-chair
(Masakazu Iwamura).
If you already know whether you are interested in preparing a proposal,
please send us an email expressing your interest. Note that an
expression of interest is not a commitment to make a formal proposal nor
an official bid. If you need further information concerning DAS, please
feel free to contact us.
**Selection.** The final selection among competing proposals will be
made short after the deadline by the DAS Steering Committee, which is
composed of all those who have themselves organized or contributed
substantially to past DAS workshops.
**Dimosthenis Karatzas (TC11 Chair) and Mazakazu Iwamura (TC11
Vice-chair)**
( , )
Calls for Papers
================
Call for Papers: Seventh IAPR International Workshop on Computational Forensics (@ICPR - repost)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
**IAPR Workshop on Computational Forensics**
August 20, 2018 - Beijing, China
Organized by IAPR Technical Committee (TC-6) on Computational Forensics
**Important Dates:**
July 1, 2018 Paper Submission deadline
July 12, 2018 Notification of acceptance
July 20, 2018 Camera-ready submission
**Web:**
**Overview.** With the advent of high-end technology, fraudulent efforts
are on rise in many areas of our daily life, may it be fake paper
documents, forgery in the digital domain or copyright infringement. In
solving the related criminal cases use of pattern recognition (PR)
principles is also gaining an important place because of their ability
in successfully assisting the forensic experts to solve many of such
cases.
The 7th IAPR International Workshop on Computational Forensics (IWCF)
will aim at addressing the theoretical and practical issues related to
this field, i.e. role of PR techniques for analyzing problems in
forensics. Effort is to bring the people together who are working on
these issues in different areas including document and speech
processing, music analysis, digital security, forensic sciences, etc.
**Areas of Interest.** Some broad areas of interest include (but are not
limited to):
- Detection of fake documents
- Authentication of security documents
- Change detection
- Copyright protection
- Encryption and watermarking
- Digital forensics
- Encryption and watermarking
- Handwriting and Speech analysis
- Face, Palm, and Iris recognition
- Anti-forensics and anti-anti-forensics Techniques
- Data leakage, Data protection and Database forensics
- Investigation of Virtual and Cloud Environments
- Malware forensics
- SDN forensics
- Mobile device forensics
- Change detection
- Cyber threat intelligence
- Large-Scale cyber investigations
- Network forensics and network traffic analysis
Like in previous years, the workshop will be a place for elaborate
discussion of academic and industrial works, documenting the advances in
the related field and creating mutual collaboration on related areas.
Interaction among practitioners and academic researchers will receive
special attention in this workshop.
**Paper Submission.** Springer will proceed with the publication of the
ICPR workshops proceedings in the LNCS series after the workshop. There
will be an informal proceeding during the workshop for communications
and finally the proceeding will be published.
*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 forum.The submission format should follow
the LNCS Springer layout (see instructions here) with length from 12 to
14 pages .
*Short Papers*
Authors may submit short papers providing an opportunity to report on
research in progress, to present novel positions or a demonstration
proposal. The submission format should follow the LNCS Springer layout
(see instructions here) with length from 6 to 8 pages.
**Organizing Committee**
Jean-Marc Ogier, University of La Rochelle, France
Chang-Tsun Li, Charles Sturt University
Nicolas Sidère, University of La Rochelle, France
**Jean-Marc Ogier, Organizing Committee Member**
( )
Call for Submissions: Int'l Workshop on Music Reading Systems (WoRMS - repost)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
**Important Dates**
15 July, 2018 Abstract submission deadline
15 July, 2018 Registration deadline
20 Sept, 2018 Workshop
**Web:**
It is our pleasure to announce the 1st International Workshop on Music
Reading Systems (WoRMS). It will take place on Thursday, the 20th of
September 2018, at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (292
Rue Saint-Martin, 75003 Paris), as a satellite event to ISMIR 2018.
WoRMS is a new workshop that tries to connect researchers who develop
music reading systems --- especially from the field of optical music
recognition, but also related topics such as score following or
cross-modal retrieval --- with researchers and practitioners that could
benefit from such systems, like librarians or musicologists.
WoRMS will be organized as a one-day workshop and we hope it will
provide a novel opportunity to share ideas, discuss current developments
and shape the future of music reading systems. We would like for diverse
points of view to engage, by explicitly inviting contributors without a
technical background to participate as well.
We strive to make the workshop as interactive as possible, with
participants getting the opportunity not just to present their work, but
to discuss current research in depth and foster relationships within the
community. Therefore, promising ideas, work-in-progress submissions and
recently submitted or published works are equally welcome. In order to
promote discussion, we will use OpenReview (the full Call for
Submissions is available at
).
Please check the website https://sites.google.com/view/worms2018 for
further information. In order to help us organizing the workshop, we
kindly ask you to register before the 15th of July, if you plan on
attending WoRMS, here:
.
Please feel free to forward this announcement to anyone who might be
interested.
**Jorge Calvo-Zaragoza, Jan Hajič Jr., Alexander Pacha, WoRMS
Organizers**
( , ,
)
IJDAR
=====
IJDAR: New Issue (Vol. 21, Issue 1 - repost)
--------------------------------------------
**Table of Contents**
Click on the links to go directly to the Springer Link page for each
article.
[Text and non-text separation in offline document images: a
survey.](http://alerts.springer.com/re?l=D0In6ahl0I6hfgfd5Iq) Showmik
Bhowmik, Ram Sarkar, Mita Nasipuri & David Doermann
[Recognition-based character segmentation for multi-level writing
style.](http://alerts.springer.com/re?l=D0In6ahl0I6hfgfd5It) Papangkorn
Inkeaw, Jakramate Bootkrajang, Phasit Charoenkwan, Sanparith Marukatat,
Shinn-Ying Ho & Jeerayut Chaijaruwanich
[Efficient document image binarization using heterogeneous computing and
parameter tuning.](http://alerts.springer.com/re?l=D0In6ahl0I6hfgfd5Iw)
Florian Westphal, Håkan Grahn & Niklas Lavesson
[Making scanned Arabic documents machine accessible using an ensemble of
SVM classifiers.](http://alerts.springer.com/re?l=D0In6ahl0I6hfgfd5Iz)
Randa Elanwar, Wenda Qin & Margrit Betke
[A novel Arabic OCR post-processing using rule-based and word context
techniques.](http://alerts.springer.com/re?l=D0In6ahl0I6hfgfd5I12) Iyad
Abu Doush, Faisal Alkhateeb & Anwaar Hamdi Gharaibeh
[Text box proposals for handwritten word spotting from
documents.](http://alerts.springer.com/re?l=D0In6ahl0I6hfgfd5I15) Suman
Ghosh & Ernest Valveny
[Fusion of LLE and stochastic LEM for Persian handwritten digits
recognition.](http://alerts.springer.com/re?l=D0In6ahl0I6hfgfd5I18)
Rassoul Hajizadeh, A. Aghagolzadeh & M. Ezoji
[Binarization of degraded document images based on contrast
enhancement.](http://alerts.springer.com/re?l=D0In6ahl0I6hfgfd5I1b) Di
Lu, Xin Huang & LiXue Sui
[Handling noise in textual image resolution enhancement using online and
offline learned
dictionaries.](http://alerts.springer.com/re?l=D0In6ahl0I6hfgfd5I1e) Rim
Walha, Fadoua Drira, Frank Lebourgeois, Christophe Garcia & Adel M.
Alimi
IJDAR 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**
( , ,
)
Datasets
========
TC-11 maintains a colletion of datasets that can be found online in the
[TC-11 Datasets
Repository](http://www.iapr-tc11.org/mediawiki/index.php/Datasets).
If you have new datasets (e.g., from competitions) that you wish to
share with the research community, please contact the TC-11 Dataset
Curator (contact information is below).
**Andreas Fischer (TC-11 Dataset Curator)**
()
Careers
=======
PostDoc and Researcher Positions at Uppsala University
------------------------------------------------------
**Jobs Advertisements:**
The group at the Centre for Image Analysis active in the field on
Handwritten Text Recognition at Uppsala Univeristy is recruiting two new
team members (PostDoc or Researcher positions). We encourage strong
candidates to apply and join us at Uppsala. The appointments are for a
maximum of two years - details may be found through the links above.
Questions should be directed to Dr. Ingela Nyström (email provided
below).
**Ingela Nyström, Professor, Uppsala University**
( )
Univ. Rouen (France): Research Engineer / PostDoc Position (repost)
-------------------------------------------------------------------
**Information extraction, Text Recognition in Historical Document
Collections**
**Important Dates**
April 1, 2018 - October 19, 2019 Contract period, renewable to Mar. 2021
**LITIS (Laboratoire d'Informatique, Traitement de l'information et des
Systèmes)** is a research laboratory associated to the University of
Rouen Normandie, Le Havre Normandie Normandie, and School of Engineering
INSA Rouen Normandie. Research at LITIS is organized around 7 research
teams which contribute to 3 main application domains: Access to
Information, Biomedical Information Processing, Ambient Intelligence.
LITIS currently includes 90 faculty staff members, 50 PhD students, 10
PostDoc and Research Engineers. The Machine Learning team of LITIS is
developing research in modeling unstructured data (signals, images,
text, etc...) with machine learning algorithms and statistical models.
For more than two decades it has contributed to the development of
reading systems and document image analysis for various applications
such as postal automation, business document exchange, digital
libraries, etc...
The **EURHISFIRM project** aims at developing a research infrastructure
to connect, collect, collate, align, and share reliable long-run
company-level data for Europe to enable researchers, policymakers and
other stakeholders to analyze, develop, and evaluate effective
strategies to promote investment and economic growth. To achieve this
goal, EURHISFIRM develops innovative tools to spark a "Big data"
revolution in the historical social sciences and to open access to
cultural heritage.
EURHISFIRM is funded by the European Commission within the
Infrastructure Development Program of Horizon 2020. The goal of the
Program is to develop world-class research infrastructures lasting for
decades
( ).
Research infrastructures are facilities, resources and services used by
the science community to foster innovation and extend the frontiers of
knowledge.
The first phase of the Infrastructure Development Program lasts for
three years. It aims at developing an in-depth design study of the
Research Infrastructure. After this phase, Development and Consolidation
Phases follow if further applications will be successful. EURHISFIRM
brings together eleven research institutions in economics, history,
information technologies and data science from seven European countries.
**Position to be filled.**
Position: Post-Doctoral fellow
Time commitment: Full-time
Duration of the contract: April 1st 2018 -- October 2019, (renewable
contract until March of 2021)
Contact: Prof. Thierry Paquet, Indicative
salary: €36 000 gross annual salary, with social security benefits
Location: LITIS, Campus du Madrillet, Faculty of science, Saint Etienne
du Rouvray, France
**Missions**
Within the project, you will be in charge of developing text information
recognition technologies (ICR) from historical document images (mostly
printed), and information extraction from these data (such as person
names, names of companies, dates, positions, stock prices etc...). The
datasets are made of financial yearbooks and price lists of European
companies, in different European languages. Your mission includes:
1. The development of a machine learning based reading system of text
lines composed of both deep optical models, and language models
(statistical, and grammar based). Layout analysis falls out of the
scope of the mission.
2. Data preparation for evaluation purposes
3. Benchmarking with other technologies (commercial products)
4. Integration of the system as a web service allowing its integration
and deployment into a full system
5. Coordination with partners of the project regarding datasets
preparation and collation of datasets, as well as software
interoperability with other developments within the EurHisFirm
consortium.
**Requirements**
The successful applicant should have a strong record in statistical
machine learning and have experience in one popular platform and
programming language in the field, so as to design, develop and make the
prototype evolve.
- PhD, or Computer Engineer, with a good record in Machine Learning
- Demonstrates ability to work in a team, curious and rigorous spirit
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills (French and
English)
**Thierry Pacquet**
( )
Student Industrial Internship Opportunities (IAPR - repost)
-----------------------------------------------------------
[IAPR's Industrial Liaison
Committee](http://www.iapr.org/committees/committees.php?id=5&subid=53)
is pleased to announce the opening of its Company Internship Brokerage
List.
The web page lists internship opportunities for students at different
levels of education and specialism. We expect many additional internship
opportunities to be listed here as the community becomes more aware of
the site.
IAPR Company Internship Brokerage List:
**Bob Fisher, Chair, IAPR Industrial Liason Committee**
( )
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
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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](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.