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September 27th, 2021

Conference and Presentation Formats

In this blog post, we provide more information on the hybrid format of the conference from a technical programme perspective, which includes information on the formats of presentation for main conference oral and poster sessions. We have received many questions on the differences between attending in person or remotely, and on the advantages of attending in person. With this blog post, we hope to answer these and other questions, as well as to reassure participants that a programme in hybrid format will cater for both types of participants.

Hybrid conference format

This format means participants (be them authors, invited speakers, or attendees without a paper) can participate either in person, i.e., in Punta Cana, or remotely. Together with Underline, we are working on the agenda to be able to offer a good conference experience regardless of your choice as a participant. In addition, we are preparing for the facts that some participants will only be able to make a decision on whether they will attend in person very late, and that participants may have connection issues. This means that:

  1. We are requesting authors to pre-record their talks and prepare virtual posters, regardless of whether they are planning to attend in person or remotely.
  2. We will offer all authors the option to present live, either in person or remotely (via zoom). If presenters are not able or willing to present live, we will broadcast the pre-recorded video (which will have the exact same duration as the live session). We will ask authors to attend the session live to take and answer questions. The live (or pre-recorded presentations) will be shown to local participants as well as to remote participants.

Oral vs poster presentations (main conference papers)

All authors will have received an email with the decision on whether their paper was selected to be presented as a poster or orally. The decision between oral and poster presentations was made with the help of Senior Area Chairs based on our perception on the best format for presentation of each individual paper. This decision was not based on the quality/merit of the papers: all accepted papers are considered to be of high quality, but different papers benefit from different presentation formats.

Oral presentations (main conference papers)

Amongst papers selected to be presented orally, we will have the following slots for pre-recorded and live presentation: Long papers will be given a 12-minute presentation slot (+3 minutes for questions), while short papers will be given an 8-minute presentation slot (+2 minutes for questions). As an author, you will have received detailed instructions on how to do that by email. Let us know if you haven’t received the instructions. We also ask oral paper authors to prepare a virtual poster, as well as a paper poster if attending the conference in person. A poster for oral papers is optional, i.e., authors can decide if they want to present their paper also as a virtual (and/or paper) poster. Because this year’s EMNLP conference is bigger than ever, we have limited time for questions during the presentation sessions. The poster session is meant to allow for participants to interact further and ask any questions that they were not able to during the limited session time. See item below for details on the format of the poster.
We can thus have the following combinations of presenters and attendees for oral presentations:

  • In-person live presentations to in-person participants, which will be also streamed to remote participants.
  • Remote live presentations streamed to in-person and remote participants.
  • Remote pre-recorded presentations streamed to in-person and remote participants.

Poster presentations (main conference papers)

Amongst papers selected to be presented as posters, we request all authors to prepare a virtual poster. In addition, for authors who are planning to attend the conference in person, we ask them to also prepare a paper poster. For any given poster (including those prepared for papers presented orally), it can thus be presented in:

  • One paper poster presentation for those attending the conference in person (presenters and attendees). In-person paper posters will not be streamed to remote participants.
  • One additional virtual poster session, where posters will be presented using Gathertown. The idea is to maximise the number of participants who will have access to posters.

As an author, you will have received detailed instructions on how to upload your poster by email. Let us know if you haven’t received the instructions. For virtual posters, a single pdf file with no more than 20MB needs to be uploaded. For paper posters, the size of the poster boards at the conference site is 92-inch (233.68 cm) in width and 46-inch (116.84 cm) in height. Please make your poster in the landscape orientation with the size no bigger than the poster board.

Findings papers

For both long and short Findings papers, we are requesting a pre-recorded video, which will be made available in the programme. The maximum length of the recording is 6 minutes for long papers, and 3 minutes for short paper.

Pre-recorded videos for Findings paper will be grouped by track and added to the virtual platform as a remote session so that participants can easily find the videos. We will not have live presentation sessions for Findings papers in the main conference (remote or in person). We have also instructed authors interested in presenting their work in one of the workshops at EMNLP 2021 to indicate that. As an author, you should have received detailed instructions on how to do that by email. Let us know if you haven’t received the instructions.

ARR papers

ARR papers accepted to the main conference or Findings of EMNLP will be published in the EMNLP 2021 proceedings. They will be treated as regular EMNLP papers and follow the exact same rules as above.

Computational Linguistics (CL) Journal and TACL papers

Papers recently accepted for the CL and TACL journals whose authors decided to present at EMNLP will receive a slot depending on their choice between oral (12 minutes) and poster presentation.

Conference schedule

A high-level version of the schedule is available on underline (https://2021.emnlp.org/program). The detailed schedule will be published October 4th. We are doing our best to accommodate for time-zones to give all authors the chance to participate live in their sessions, be it in person or remotely.

Registration details

Details on the registration (for in person or remote attendance) are available on the website: https://2021.emnlp.org/registration.

Format for workshops and co-located events

Please refer to their websites for specific information as this blog post only applies to the programme for the Main Conference and Findings papers.

Invitation letter to attend the conference

If you are planning to attend the conference in person and need an invitation letter to apply for a visa, please check the conference registration website and fill out the form to request such a letter (https://2021.emnlp.org/registration).