Full Title: Interspeech 2025: "Fair and Inclusive Speech Science and Technology"

Date: 17-Aug-2025 - 21-Aug-2025
Location: Rotterdam, Netherlands
Contact Person: Ginny Ruiter
Meeting Email: [email protected]
Web Site: interspeech2025.org

Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics; Phonetics; Phonology

Call Deadline: 21-Oct-2024

Meeting Description:

It is with great pleasure that we invite you to the 26th edition of the Interspeech Conference, to be held August 17-21, 2025, in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

The theme of Interspeech 2025 is "Fair and Inclusive Speech Science and Technology", and aims to celebrate and incorporate the vast speech diversity both within and between individuals, as well as within and between languages. This theme emphasizes diversity as a source of richness and information, contributing to the development of fairer, more robust, and personalized speech technology applications and more accurate theories of human speech processing. By embracing this diversity, we can create theories and technologies that are inclusive of everyone, ensuring that speech science and technology benefit all individuals and communities.

Call for Challenge & Special Session Proposals:

Important Dates

Proposals of challenges due: 21 October 2024
Notification of pre-selection for challenges: 31 October 2024
Proposals of special sessions due: 8 November 2024
Notification of pre-selection for special sessions: 18 November 2024
Challenge paper deadline (same as regular papers): 12 February 2025
Final list of challenges and special sessions: 14 May 2025

Submissions for challenge and special session proposals are invited for Interspeech 2025:
https://interspeech2025.org/

Challenge proposals should cover interdisciplinary topics and/or important new emerging areas in speech communication. Submissions related to the special focus of the conference's theme, Fair and Inclusive Speech Science and Technology, are particularly welcome. Proposals should describe why the topic is relevant to the conference regular topics, and if applicable, to the conference's theme. Note that the deadline for challenge proposal submission is earlier than regular special sessions, namely on October 21 2024. This is to give the challenge organizers time to disseminate the call and give participants enough time to participate and submit their papers before the regular paper deadline.

A Challenge proposal must contain the following information:
Challenge title
Challenge organizers (including contact information and a brief biography for each organizer)
Brief introduction of the challenge
Significance of the challenge
Rules for participation
Criteria for judging the submissions to the competition
Data sets to be used and, if applicable, planned baseline systems
Relevant dates (e.g., submission deadline, data available, and winner announcement)
A list of recommended expert reviewers (max 20 names), in compliance with the ISCA requirement (https://isca-speech.org/Reviewing)

Each special session proposal must contain the following information:
- Special session title
- Names and affiliations of the organizers (including contact information and a brief biography for each organizer)
- Up to five bullet points on what makes the session special
- A summary (up to one page) stating the importance of the session's topic and objectives. The summary should also explain why the topic is not properly covered by regular conference sessions.
- A tentative list of authors who could contribute papers to the session. Note that with an approximate 50% acceptance rate for Interspeech papers, special sessions should have a minimum of 12 anticipated submissions, unless their format allocates time to other formats than paper presentations.
- Special sessions may have a different format from regular sessions, e.g., panel discussion, longer summary talks, or a mix thereof. The proposal's
session format should be clearly defined (panel, oral, posters, etc.).
- Additional or non-standard resources (e.g., data, equipment, poster stands, etc.) needed for organizing the special session.
- A list of recommended expert reviewers (max 20 names), in compliance with the ISCA requirement (https://isca-speech.org/Reviewing)
- Proposals will be evaluated by the organizing committee in consultation with the ISCA Technical Committee for relevance and significance to the conference.

Papers for approved challenges and special sessions must be submitted according to the same schedule and procedure as used for regular papers. Papers will undergo the same review process by anonymous and independent reviewers.

Note that challenges and special sessions can run for a maximum of three years in total. If this rule makes your proposal ineligible, we encourage you to organize your event as an Interspeech Satellite Workshop instead.

Proposals as well as any questions should be submitted to the Special Session Chairs: Rob van Son (Netherlands Cancer Institute, the Netherlands) and Heysem Kaya (Utrecht University, the Netherlands) at [email protected].