The Program Committee is pleased to announce its call for proposals for the 19th annual Conference and Members’ Meeting of the Text Encoding Initiative Consortium (TEI), which will be held September 18–20, 2019 (Wed-Fri), at the University of Graz, Austria; with workshops September 16–17 (Mon-Tue).

This year’s theme is:

What is text, really? TEI and beyond

The development of the TEI and the discussions around it have shown how manifold text(s) can be, and how far-reaching the TEI approach is. Thus, this year’s theme ‘What is text, really?’ poses a fundamental question, which goes beyond the pure reference to the seminal 1990 paper by DeRose, Durand, Mylonas, and Renear. They answered it somewhat pragmatically introducing a model for text as an ordered hierarchy of content objects which can easily be formalised with digital technologies, but, as they said later on: text can be much more than that. Text encoding can make various aspects of texts explicit, enabling scholars to examine their nature and their relationship with other objects. In this context, the power of the TEI relies on its technological interactions, supporting software of all kinds operating upon texts, from visualisation to annotation tools, digital publishing systems, or statistical analysis. The TEI framework is a way of modelling knowledge and engaging in a dialogue with ontologies, conceptual models, and recent approaches such as text as graph. For text-centric disciplines the TEI offers a range of solutions that address core research needs. However, for object-based disciplines, like archaeology or museology, where text and its encoding is only a small part of their data modelling ecosystem, the value of TEI is not so clear and it competes with other modeling approaches.

This year’s TEI conference wants not only to reach the community interested in digital representation and processing of text, but also to encourage scholars working on the fringes of the TEI and beyond to join us in discussion.

Possible topics are (this list is not exclusive!):

  • TEI and models of text
  • TEI across corpora, languages, and cultures
  • TEI, formal ontologies, controlled vocabularies and Linked Open Data
  • TEI and Galleries/Libraries/Archives/Museums
  • TEI simplification and extension
  • TEI for analysis, annotation and visualization
  • TEI and non-XML technologies
  • TEI and stand-off markup
  • TEI and beyond: interactions, interchange, integrations and interoperability
  • TEI environments and infrastructures
  • TEI and publication
  • TEI and sustainability

Submission Information

Each submission should include a title, an abstract, up to five keywords, and a brief biography for each of the authors. (Each biography should be no more than 500 characters, and should include current affiliation, research interests, and projects).

The following word counts apply to the text of the abstract excluding titles, bibliography, keywords, and biographies.

Long papers

Speakers will be given 30 minutes each: 20 minutes for presentation, 10 minutes for discussion. Proposals should not exceed 300 words. This presentation type is suitable for substantial research, theoretical or critical discussions.

Short papers

Speakers will be given 15 minutes each: 10 minutes for presentation, 5 minutes for discussion. This type of presentation is suited for the introduction of tools, raising of new ideas, and experimental topics. Proposals should not exceed 300 words.

Panel sessions

Panels will be given 90 minutes, which can be used flexibly to include, for example, 3 individual papers followed by questions, or a roundtable discussion. Panel proposals must include a list of speakers and their biographies. This type of presentation is suited to coordinated approaches or discussions relating to a single theme.  

Proposals for 3 papers should not exceed 3 x 300 words, plus a 200-word introduction. Proposals for discussion panels should not exceed 600 words.

Posters

A “poster slam” session will be dedicated to poster presentations of 1 minutes each. Subsequently, poster presenters will have the chance to tell interested parties more about their project during the poster exhibition, where the audience can browse freely. This type of presentation is suited to introducing new work, projects, or software. Proposals for poster presentations should not exceed 300 words.

Demonstrations

A dedicated demonstration session will provide tool presenters with an opportunity to show the tools they are working on and with. Tool demonstrators will be given 10 minutes each and individual presentations during the poster session in a dedicated area. Proposals for tool demonstrations should not exceed 300 words.

Workshops

Workshops will be held before the conference, September 16–17, 2019 (Mon-Tue). They provide an opportunity for participants to work together on TEI-related topics. Proposals for workshops should not exceed 800 words (excl. bibliography, biography etc.) and must include:

  • A brief outline of the proposed topic and its appeal to the TEI community
  • The duration of the proposed workshop or seminar (half day, full day)
  • Any special requirements (e.g. laptops, projector, flipchart)

A list of proposed workshop leader(s) with a brief biography of each one is required too. Each biography should be no more than 500 characters, and should include current affiliation, research interests, and projects.

Registration to the workshops is handled via conftool. The conference organisers will not charge for the workshops. Any fees considered by the workshop organisers will have to be managed by themselves.

Special Interest Groups (SIGs)

If you are interested in holding a SIG meeting during the conference, please contact the local hosts to book a room: tei2019@uni-graz.at.

Language

The proposals must be submitted in English. The conference language is English.

Submission Procedure  

  • Proposals must be submitted online via ConfTool:
    https://www.conftool.com/tei2019/ . You will need a (free) account to submit a proposal.
  • The deadline for submissions is May 1, 2019 May 12, 2019 by 23:59 CET.
  • All proposals will be peer-reviewed by the Program Committee.
  • Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by June 24, 2019.
  • The deadline for submissions of the final abstracts is July 29, 2019. Final abstracts have to be in PDF and in a format described by OxGarage to be convertible into TEI (http://oxgarage2.tei-c.org/) (or directly in TEI). We appreciate if you follow the guidelines of the jTEI (https://journal.tei-c.org/index.php/journal/about/submissions#authorGuidelines) for formatting and citation style.
  • For further information please contact the local organizers at tei2019@uni-graz.at.