SPECOM 2014 - CALL FOR PAPERS

*********************************************************

16th International Conference on Speech and Computer (SPECOM-2014)

Venue: Novi Sad, Serbia, 5-9 October 2014

Web: www.specom.nw.ru

SPECOM NEWS

SPECOM this year is organized in parallel with DOGS (The Tenth Conference on Digital Speech and Image Processing) in the same time at the same place. Participants will be able to attend both conferences.

ORGANIZERS

The conference is organized by the Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad (UNS, Novi Sad, Serbia), in cooperation with Moscow State Linguistic University (MGLU, Moscow, Russia) and St. Petersburg Institute for Informatics and Automation of the Russian Academy of Science (SPIIRAS, St. Petersburg, Russia).

SPECOM conferences

The SPECOM conferences are long time being organised by SPIIRAS (St.Petersburg) and MGLU (Moscow). Recently SPECOM venue is significantly varied: Patras, Greece, 2005; Kazan, Russia, 2011; Plzen, Czech Republic, 2013.

The last conference was organized in parallel with TSD'2013 (The 16th International Conference of Text, Speech and Dialogue) and had a great success and benefits of joining the various research teams. Continue this tradition SPECOM'2014 and DOGS'2014 will be organized jointly. The both conferences are devoted to issues of human-machine interaction and their topics harmonically add each other.

Since 2013 due to extending contribution of University of West Bohemia, Czech Republic the SPECOM proceedings are published by Springer-Verlag in their Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) series. LNAI series are listed in all major citation databases such as DBLP, SCOPUS, EI, INSPEC, or COMPENDEX.

TOPICS

Topics of the conference will include (but are not limited to):

Signal processing and feature extraction

Speech enhancement

Multichannel signal processing

Speech recognition and understanding

Spoken language processing

Spoken dialogue systems

Speaker identification and diarization

Speech forensics and security

Language identification

Text-to-speech systems

Speech perception and speech disorders

Speech translation

Multimodal analysis and synthesis

Audio-visual speech processing

Multimedia processing

Speech and language resources

Applications for human-computer interaction

OFFICIAL LANGUAGE

The official language of the event will be English. However, papers on processing of languages other than English are strongly encouraged.

FORMAT OF THE CONFERENCE

The conference program will include presentation of invited papers, oral presentations, and a poster/demonstration sessions. Papers will be presented in plenary or topic oriented sessions.

Social events including a trip to the Krusedol monastery and wine makers on Fruska Gora will allow for additional informal interactions. Details about the social event will be available on the web page.

SUBMISSION OF PAPERS

Authors are invited to submit a full paper not exceeding 8 pages formatted in the LNCS style (see below). Those accepted will be presented either orally or as posters. The decision on the presentation format will be based upon the recommendation of three independent reviewers. The authors are asked to submit their papers using the on-line submission form accessible from the conference web site.

Papers submitted to SPECOM 2014 must not be under review by any other conference or publication during the SPECOM review cycle, and must not be previously published or accepted for publication elsewhere.

As the reviewing is blind, the paper should not include authors' names and affiliations. Furthermore, self-references that reveal the author's identity, e.g., 'We previously showed (Smith, 1991) ...', should be avoided. Instead, use citations, such as 'Smith previously showed (Smith, 1991) ...'. Papers that do not conform to the requirements above are determined to be rejected without review.

The paper format for the review has to be the PDF file with all required fonts included. Upon notification of acceptance, speakers will receive further information on submitting their camera-ready and electronic sources (for detailed instructions on the final paper format see http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0).

IMPORTANT DATES

May 18, 2014 ............. Submission of full papers

June 1, 2014 ............. Notification of acceptance

June 15, 2014 ............ Final papers (camera ready) and registration

October 5-9, 2014 ........ Conference dates

The contributions to the conference will be published in proceedings that will be made available to participants at the time of the conference.

CONFERENCE FEES

The conference fee depends on the date of payment and on your status. It includes one copy of the conference proceedings, refreshments/coffee breaks, opening dinner, welcome party, mid-conference social event admissions, and organizing costs. In order to lower the fee as much as possible, meals during the conference, the accommodation, and the conference trip are not included.

Full participant:

early registration by June 15, 2013 – RSD 40000 (approx. 350 EUR)

late registration by September 1, 2013 – RSD 43000 (approx. 380 EUR)

on-site registration – RSD 50000 (approx. 440 EUR)

Student (reduced):

early registration by June 15, 2013 – RSD 32000 (approx. 280 EUR)

late registration by September 1, 2013 – RSD 35000 (approx. 310 EUR)

on-site registration – RSD 40000 (approx. 350 EUR)

The payment may be refunded up until September 15, at the cost of RSD 6.500. No refund is possible after this date. All costs are in Serbian Dinar (RSD), see e.g. http://www.xe.com/ucc/ for the current exchange rate.

At least one of the authors has to register and pay the registration fee by June 15, 2014 for their paper to be included in the conference proceedings. Only one paper of up to 8 pages is included in the regular registration fee. The additional paper and page charge is RSD 5000 per page. Any additional paper is treated as extra pages. An extra page charge is RSD 5000 per page. An author with more than one paper pays the additional paper rates unless a co-author has also registered and paid the full registration fee. In the case of uncertainty, feel free to contact the organising committee for clarification.

VENUE

The conference will be organized in Hotel Park, Novi Sad, Serbia (http://hotelparkns.com).

Novi Sad is the second largest city in Serbia. The city has population of 231,798 inhabitants. It is located in the southern part of Pannonian Plain, on the border of the Bačka and Srem regions, on the banks of the Danube river and Danube-Tisa-Danube Canal, facing the northern slopes of Fruška Gora mountain. The city was founded in 1694, when Serb merchants formed a colony across the Danube from the Petrovaradin fortress, a Habsburg strategic military post. In the 18th and 19th centuries, it became an important trading and manufacturing centre, as well as a centre of Serbian culture of that period, earning the nickname Serbian Athens. Today, Novi Sad is an industrial and financial centre of the Serbian economy, as well as a major cultural center.

The University of Novi Sad was founded on 28 June 1960. Today it comprises 14 faculties located in the four major towns of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina: Novi Sad, Subotica, Zrenjanin, and Sombor. The University of Novi Sad is now the second largest among six state universities in Serbia. The main University Campus, covering an area of 259,807m², provides the University of Novi Sad with a unique and beautiful setting in the region and the city of Novi Sad. Having invested considerable efforts in intensifying international cooperation and participating in the process of university reforms in Europe, the University of Novi Sad has come to be recognized as a reform-oriented university in the region and on the map of universities in Europe.

The Faculty of Technical Sciences (Fakultet Tehničkih Nauka, FTN, www.ftn.uns.ac.rs) with 1,200 employees and more than 12,000 students is the largest faculty at UNS. FTN offers engineering education within 71 study programmes. As a research and scientific institution, FTN has 13 departments and 31 research centres. FTN also publishes 4 international journals and organises 16 scientific conferences on various aspects of engineering, including the conference DOGS which is dedicated to the area of speech technologies where FTN has the leading position in the Western Balkan region.

ACCOMMODATION

The organizing committee has arranged accommodation for reasonable prices in the same Hotel Park, which is situated near the city center. The rooms with sufficient discount are reserved for the conference days.

ADDRESS

All correspondence regarding the conference should be addressed to:

SPECOM Secretariat

E-mail: specom@iias.spb.su

Phone/Fax: +7 812 328 7081

Fax: +7 812 328 4450 — Please, designate the faxed material with capitals 'SPECOM' on top.

SPECOM-2014 conference web site: www.specom.nw.ru