Natural Language and Information Systems : 13th International Conference on Applications of Natural Language to Information Systems

This volume contains the papers presented at NLDB 2008, the 13th Inter- tional Conference on Natural Language and Information Systems, held June 25-27,2008.It also containssome of the best researchproposalsas submitted to theNLDB2008doctoralsymposiumheldonJune24,2008.Theprogrammealso includes three invited talks covering the main perspectives of the application of naturallanguageto informationsystems: the wayhumansprocess, communicate and understand natural language, what are the implications and challenges - wardssemanticsearchforthenewWebgeneration, hownaturallanguageapplies to the well-established database way of querying as a means to unlock data and information for end users. We received 68 papers as regular papers for the main conference and 14 short papers for the doctoral symposium. Each paper for the main conference was assigned four reviewers based on the preferences expressed by the Program Committee members. We ensured that every paper had at least two reviewers that expressedinterest in reviewing it or indicated that they could reviewit. We ensured that each paper got at least three reviews. As a result, only 10% of the papers were reviewed by three reviewers. The Conference Chair and the two Program Committee Co-chairs acted as Meta-Reviewers.Eachofthemtookroughly1/3ofthepapers(obviouslyrespe- ing con?icts of interest), for which s/he was responsible. This included studying the reviews, launching discussions and asking for clari?cations whenever nec- sary, as well as studying the papers whenever a need for an informed additional opinion arose or when the reviewers notes did not allow for a decision.