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,
Major Amendment to several items (mainly Article 2.6.4 Individual Membership and Article 2.3.1 Special Interest Groups) approved on May 18, 2012
Amendment to Article 2.1 (adding (a) International organization or its chapter/branch) approved on August 4, 2012)

1. Mission

The mission of the Asian Federation of Natural Language Processing (hereafter abbreviated as AFNLP) is to promote research and application of the computational analysis and the automatic processing of all languages of importance to the Asian region, by assisting like-minded organizations and institutions through information sharing, conference organization, research and publication coordination, and other forms of support relevant to natural language processing, without regard to differences in race, gender, language, religious belief or political stance.

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 and Members-at-Large in the AFNLP Executive Committee.
(a) International organization or its chapter/branch
(b) International conference
(c) Regional organization
(d) 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 organization 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 representative shall initially 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 six office bearers responsible to the Board for the running of AFNLP

  • President
  • Vice President
  • Secretary General
  • Honorary Treasurer
  • Honorary Bursar
  • Web Master

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 Vice President, the Secretary General and the Honorary Treasurer shall be nominated by NCAC. The nominees (except the Vice President) shall be approved by the majority (over half) of the Board of AFNLP.

2.2.3 Both Honorary Bursar and Web Master shall be appointed by the Executive Committee.

2.2.4 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 AFNLP. Its Chairman shall be the President, its Vice Chairman shall be the Vice President. It shall include the Office Bearers under 2.2 (excluding Honorary Bursar and Web Master), the immediately Past Secretary and the immediately Past Treasurer during the year immediately following the election of a new Secretary and Treasurer, the Chairs of two other committees under 2.4 (ALRC and CLC), and four Members-at-Large (MAL), one being nominated by the President and approved by the Board, and three being nominated and elected directly by AFNLP individual membership. Each region shouldn’t have more than one MAL. If vacancies occur, the Executive Committee shall appoint replacements serving before an electioncan be held to fill those vacancies

2.3.1 Special Interest Groups (SIGs)

The society shall have SIGs monitored by the Executive Committee. The regulation of SIGs (for initiating, operation, and abolishing, etc.) shall be decided by the Executive Committee.

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 2.4.1 and 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)

The Vice President shall be the Chair of this committee. The Chair will appoint several members subject to approval by the Executive Committee. This Committee shall have the following responsibilities:

  • To coordinate the activities of the conferences under AFNLP.
  • To organize and supervise the AFNLP flagship conference.
  • To interact with other well-established international conferences, and hold joint events when it is appropriate.
  • To make recommendations to the Board to approve the admission of new conferences of AFNLP, and
  • To make recommendations to the Board to remove inactive conferences from AFNLP.

2.4.2 Asian Language Resources Committee (ALRC)

This Committee shall have the following responsibilities:

  • To coordinate the activities of resource building activities in the region
  • To interact with international initiatives of resource building and standardization activities
  • To make recommendations to the Board to initiate international cooperation on resource building and related research in Asia

2.4.3 Communications and Liaison Committee (CLC)

This Committee shall have the following responsibilities:

  • To promote the profile of the AFNLP in the international community
  • To facilitate communication among members of the AFNLP and researchers in the region
  • To maintain official records of activities of the AFNLP such as proceedings of academic gatherings in the region, minutes of  meetings

2.4.4 Nominations and Constitutional Affairs Committee (NCAC)

This Committee shall have the following responsibilities to recommend to the Board for approval by twothirds majority upon the endorsement of the Executive Committee.

  • To nominate at least one candidate for Vice President, Secretary General and Honorary Treasurer under 2.2
  • To nominate candidates for the Chairs of the ALRC (2.4.2) and CLC (2.4.3) Committees
  • To nominate candidates for the Members-at-Large under 2.3
  • To review and to recommend the list of regional representatives (under 2.1.4) every two years.

This Committee shall be chaired by the most recent past President and consists of two recent past Presidents.

2.5 Terms of Office

2.5.1 The President, the Vice President, the General Secretary, the Honorary Treasurer, the Chairs of its committees (2.4) and Members-at-Large (2.3) shall serve for a non-renewable term of 2 years.

2.5.2 At the end of the term(s) of office of the Secretary General and the Honorary Treasurer, they will assume respectively the one-year positions of Past Secretary and Past Treasurer in order to provide for continuity in the handling of the association’s business.

2.5.3 The Honorary Bursar and the Web Master shall serve for a renewable term of 2 years.

2.5.4 The election of Members-at-Large by AFNLP individual membership shall be held every 2 years and before the election of Office Bearers.

2.5.5 The new President of AFNLPshall assume office on the first of January of odd numbered year, and all other Officers as soon as practical thereafter.

2.6 Membership

AFNLP membership includes both Institutional Members and Individual Members.

2.6.1 Other than categories (a), (b), and (c) in Section 2.1, industrial sponsors may have affiliated membership of the AFNLP 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 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).

2.6.4 Individual Membership

AFNLP individual membership is open to any person with an interest in Natural Language Processing. Dues are payable upon receipt of a dues statement. Individual Members in arrears will be dropped from individual membership. Participants of International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing (IJCNLP) or those conferences jointly organized with IJCNLP will automatically become members; membership last 2 years for biennial conferences, and 1 year for annual conferences.

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 amendment shall be subject to the two-thirds majority vote of the Board, on the recommendation of the Executive Committee.

Annex A. Founding Conferences:

  • ICCPOL: International Conference on the Computer Processing of Oriental Languages
  • AIRS: Asian Information Retrieval Symposium
  • 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 [Sydney]
  • ANLP: The Association for 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 Association of India [New Delhi]
  • SIG-HLT: SIG on Human Language Technology of Korea Institute of Information Scientists and Engineers (KIISE) [Seoul]

Annex C. Founding Regional Representatives:

  • Jun’ichi TSUJII, Tokyo
  • Key-Sun, CHOI, Taejon
  • Keh-Yih, SU, Taipei
  • Benjamin K TSOU, Hong Kong
COPYRIGHT © 2019 Asian Federation of Natural Language Processing