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AFNLP Constitution
Asian Federation of Natural Language Processing (AFNLP) Constitution
(Draft approved in Sapporo on July 11-12, 2003,
Amendment to Article 2.5 approved on June 22, 2007)
1. Mission
The mission of the Asian Federation of Natural Language Processing (hereafter abbreviated as AFNLP) is to promote and enhance research and development relating to the computational analysis and the automatic processing of all languages of importance to the Asian region without regard to differences in race, gender, language, religious belief or political stand, by assisting and supporting like-minded organizations and institutions through information sharing, conference organization, research and publication coordination, and other forms of support in consonance with the mission of AFNLP.
2. Governance:
2.1 Board:
The Board of AFNLP shall be the ultimate decision body and shall have responsibility for AFNLP. The membership of the Board shall consist of representatives drawn from the following categories:
(a) International conference
(b) Regional organization
(c) Regional representative
2.1.1 International conference shall consist of the founding conferences at the time of the formation of AFNLP, as noted in Annex A, and any others admitted subsequently.
2.1.2 Regional organizations shall consist of the founding regional organizations at the time of the formation of AFNLP, as noted in Annex B, and any others admitted subsequently.
2.1.3 In case where a regional organization has a closely identified conference, there shall be only one representative on the Board under either 2.1.1 or 2.1.2.
2.1.4 Regional representatives shall consist of the founding representatives, as noted in Annex C, and any others admitted subsequently. The number of Board members under 2.1.c shall not exceed one third of the total.
2.2 Office Bearers:
There shall be four office bearers responsible to the Board for the running of AFNLP
- President
- Vice President
- Secretary General
- Honorary Treasurer
2.2.1 The President and Vice President shall preside over the Board. The President shall be succeeded by the Vice President who shall be elected by a minimum two-thirds majority vote of the Board on the recommendation of the Nominations and Constitutional Affairs Committee (NCAC) and approved by the Executive Committee.
2.2.2. The President shall appoint the Secretary General and the Hon Treasurer upon the approval of the Board.
2.2.3 The President on behalf of the executive Committee shall, before the end of each calendar year, present an Annual Report to the Board on the activities of AFNLP which shall include the reports of its members under 2.1(a) & 2.1(b).
2.3 Executive Committee
The Executive Committee of AFNLP shall assist the President in managing the affairs of the Federation. Its Chairman shall be the President, its Vice Chairman shall be the Vice President, and it shall include the Secretary General, the Hon Treasurer, the immediate past President, and the Chairs of three other committees under 2.4 (CCC, ALRC, and CLC) who are from the Board, and up to two members at large, recommended by the President and approved by the Board.
2.4 Other Committees
The following committees shall operate under the Executive Committee. Each committee shall have its own terms of reference and operational procedures. Each Committee chair, except as noted in 2.4.4, shall be elected by the Board on the recommendation of the Nominations and Constitutional Affairs Committee (NCAC) and approved by the Executive Committee, and may have up to half of its members from outside the Board.
2.4.1 Conference Coordinating Committee (CCC)
This committee shall have the responsibilities to:
- coordinate the activities of the conferences under AFNLP.
- organise and supervise the AFNLP flagship conference.
- interact with other influential international conferences, and hold joint events when it is appropriate.
- make recommendations to the Board to approve the admission of new conferences under the AFNLP coordination, and
- make recommendations to the Board to remove inactive conferences from AFNLP.
2.4.2 Asian Language Resources Committee (ALRC)
This committee shall have the responsibilities to:
- Coordinate the activities of resource building activities in the region
- Interact with international initiatives of resource building and standardization activities
- To make recommendations to the Board to initiate Asian-wide cooperation on resource building and related research
[Prof Takenobu Tokunaga and Prof Chu-Ren Huang have co-chaired the task force for this]
2.4.3 Communications and Liaison Committee (CLC)
This committee shall have the responsibilities to
- Promote the profile of the AFNLP in the international community
- Facilitate communication among members of the AFNLP and researchers in the region
- Maintain official records of activities of the AFNLP such as proceedings of academic gatherings in the region, minutes of AFNLP meetings
[Dr Haizhou Li has chaired the task force for this]
2.4.4 Nominations and Constitutional Affairs Committee (NCAC)
This Committee shall have the following responsibilities to recommend to the Board for approval by two thirds majority upon the endorsement of the Executive Committee.
- To nominate at least one candidate for Vice-President
- To nominate candidates for the Chairs of the Committees under 2.4
- To propose new representative(s) to the Board under 2.1.2, 2.1.3 and 2.1.4
- To propose removal of representatives from the Board under 2.6.3
This Committee shall be chaired by the most recent past President and consists of two other members on the recommendation of the Executive Committee and approved by Board by a two-thirds majority.
2.5 Terms of Office
The Board members (2.1), Office Bearers (2.2 and 2.3) and Chairs of its committees (2.4) shall serve for a term of 2 years, renewable only once in the same capacity.
The new President of the Federation shall assume
office on January 1 of odd numbered years, and all other Officers as soon as practical thereafter.
2.6 Membership
2.6.1 Other than categories (a), (b), and (c) in Section 2.1, industrial sponsors may have affiliated membership of the Federation and may have representatives serving on 2.4.1 to 2.4.3, but not on the Board.
2.6.2 Admission of new members
Membership in AFNLP may be applied for via the Board with supporting documentation, and new members may be admitted to AFNLP on the recommendation of the Executive Committee upon the nomination of the CCC for category 2.1.(a) membership, and upon the nomination of the NCAC for category 2.1.(b) and 2.1(c) membership, followed by a minimum two-thirds majority vote of the Board.
2.6.3 Termination of Membership
A member may withdraw from AFNLP by formally notifying the Board, whereupon all its affiliation with AFNLP will cease except for any expressed or implied obligations. Membership in AFNLP may be terminated by a two-thirds majority vote of the Board upon the recommendation of the NCAC, and approval of the Executive Committee, if the member's mission and/or activities have been demonstrated to be not in accordance with the Mission of AFNLP under (1).
3. Official Language
English
4. Location and Designation
The location of the Secretariat of AFNLP shall be determined by the Executive Committee and only city designations shall be used for the official location of members.
5. Constitutional Amendments
Any constitutional amendments shall be subject to the two-thirds majority vote of the Board, on the recommendation of the NCAC Committee, and approval by the Executive Committee.
Annex A. Founding Conferences:
- ICCPOL:
International Conference on the Computer Processing of Oriental Languages
- IRAL:
International Workshop on Information Retrieval of Asian Languages
- NLPRS:
Natural Language Processing and Research Studies
- PACLIC:
Pacific Asian Conference on Language, Information, and Computation
- PACLING:
Pacific Association for Computational Linguistics Conference
- SNLP:
Symposium on Natural Language Processing ( Bangkok )
Annex B. Founding Regional organizations:
- ACLCLP:
Association of Computational Linguistics & Chinese Language Processing [ Taipei ]
- ALTA:
Australasian Language Technology Association
- ANLP:
Applied Natural Language Processing [ Tokyo ]
- CLCS:
Chinese Language Computer Society [ Baltimore ]
- COLIPS:
Chinese and Oriental Language Information Processing Society [ Singapore ]
- CIPSC:
Chinese Information Processing Society of China [ Beijing ]
- NLPAI: Natural Language Processing and Artificial Processing [ Tokyo ]
- SIG-KLC:
SIG on Korean Language Processing of Korean Information Science Society
Annex C. Founding Regional Representatives:
- Jun'ichi TSUJII, Tokyo
- Key-Sun, CHOI, Taejon
- Keh-Yih, SU, Taipei
- Benjamin K TSOU, Hong Kong
- Yusoff, ZAHARIN, Penang
Attachment
- Dr Keh-Yih SU has chaired the Task force on Central conference coordination under the AFNLP Steering Committee.
- Prof Takenobu, TOKUNAGA has chaired the Task force on Asian Language Resources under the AFNLP Steering Committee.
- Prof Haizhou LI has chaired the Communications and Publications Committee under the AFNLP Steering Committee.
- Prof Benjamin K TSOU has chaired the Constitution Drafting Task Force under the AFNLP Steering Committee.
- Prof Junichi TSUJII has served as Convenor of the Steering Committee of AFNLP.
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