Call for Competitions

Call for Competitions

The ICDAR2024 Organizing Committee invites proposals for competitions that aim at evaluating the performance of algorithms and methods related to areas of document analysis and recognition.

You are cordially invited to submit a proposal, that should contain the following information:

• Contest title and abstract
• A brief description of the competition, including what the particular task under evaluation is, why this competition is of interest to the ICDAR community, and the expected number of participants
• An outline of the competition schedule
• Description of the dataset to be used, and the evaluation process and metrics for submitted methods
• The names, contact information, and brief CVs of the competition organizers, outlining previous experience in performance evaluation and/or organizing competitions

The following rules shall apply to the accepted Competitions:

• The name of competition must be standardized by starting with “ICDAR 2024” (e.g., “ICDAR 2024 Competition on …” or “ICDAR 2024 … Competition.”)
• Datasets used in the competitions must be made available after the end of the competitions.  Specifically, the training data and ground truth must be publicly released and there must be a way to evaluate performance on a test set. This could take the form of an evaluation server, or the test data, ground truth, and evaluation script could be made publicly available. In principle, the organizers should submit the dataset to IAPR TC10 or TC11.
• Evaluation methodologies and metrics used must be described in detail so that results can be replicated later.  Evaluation scripts must be released afterwards.
• Each competition has to be presented with a poster at a prominent place at the conference venue, and selected competitions will get the chance to be presented orally in the dedicated session mentioned above.
• Competitions must have a sufficient number of participants to be able to draw meaningful conclusions.
• Reports (full papers) on each competition will be reviewed and, if accepted (the competition ran according to plan, attracted a minimum level of participation and is appropriately described), will be published in the ICDAR 2024 conference proceedings.
• Participants should not have access to the ground-truthed test dataset until the end of the competition. The evaluation should be done by the organizers.

Submission Guidelines & Inquiries

All proposals should be submitted by electronic mail to the Competition Chairs (Xiang Bai and George Retsinas) via:  competitions-chairs@icdar2024.net 

We encourage competitions proposals with a solid plan to remain active and challenging for the community over and above ICDAR 2024.

For any inquiries you may have regarding the competitions, please contact us via above email. In case of an emergency, you can directly reach out to the Competition Chairs, Xiang Bai and George Retsinas via xbai@hust.edu.cn and gretsinas@central.ntua.gr respectively.

Important Dates

• November 20, 2023: Competition Proposal Due
• December 10, 2023: Competition Acceptance Notification
• January 20, 2024: Individual Competition Websites are Live
• March 31, 2024: Suggested deadline for competition participants
• April 10, 2024: Initial Submission of Competition Reports Deadline
• April 30, 2024: Camera-Ready Papers Due
• June 30, 2024: Communicate Winners to Chairs
• August 30-September 4, 2024: Presentation of results at ICDAR Conference