DeTermIt! 2026

About the Workshop

In today’s interconnected world, it is crucial to ensure that knowledge is accessible to diverse audiences, regardless of language proficiency and domain expertise. Automatic Text Simplification (ATS) and text difficulty assessment are central to this goal, especially in the age of Large Language Models (LLMs) and Generative AI (GenAI), which increasingly mediate access to information.

The second edition of the DeTermIt! workshop focuses on the evaluation and modeling of text difficulty in multilingual, terminology-rich contexts, with a particular emphasis on the interaction between:

• text simplification,
• terminology and conceptual complexity, and
• LLM/GenAI-based generation and rewriting.

The 2026 edition builds on the first DeTermIt! workshop held at LREC-COLING 2024 (https://determit2024.dei.unipd.it/), as well as related initiatives such as the CLEF SimpleText track (https://simpletext-project.com/), which provides reusable data and benchmarks for scientific text summarization and simplification. DeTermIt! 2026 aims to bring together researchers and practitioners interested in terminology-aware simplification, lexical and conceptual difficulty, and evaluation protocols for GenAI systems.

Call for Papers

We welcome contributions that address theoretical, methodological, and applied aspects of text difficulty, including resource creation and evaluation (e.g., corpora, datasets, and benchmarks), with a focus on how linguistic complexity, specialized terminology, and domain knowledge interact with human understanding. In particular, we encourage work that explores how LLMs and GenAI can be evaluated, constrained, or guided to produce readable, faithful, and accessible texts.

As for the main conference, authors will be asked to document the language resources (data, tools, standards, evaluation sets) used or created in their work, in line with LREC’s long-standing commitment to resource sharing and reproducibility. Details about the submission platform and formatting requirements will follow the official LREC 2026 guidelines and will be announced on this website in due time.

Paper Types

• Long papers – up to 8 pages of content, presenting substantial and original work.
• Short papers – up to 4 pages, for focused contributions, datasets, tools, or negative results.
• Position papers – up to 8 pages, discussing open challenges, methodological issues, or cross-disciplinary perspectives.

All accepted papers will be presented at the workshop and included in the official LREC 2026 workshop proceedings.

Please, us the official START Conference Management DeTermIt! 2026 link to submit your paper.

Topics of Interest

We invite submissions on (but not limited to) the following themes:

1. Theoretical and Modeling Perspectives

• Cognitive and linguistic models of text and lexical complexity.
• Multilingual readability assessment and text difficulty prediction.
• Modeling conceptual difficulty and domain-specific terminology.
• Theoretical links between lexicography, terminology, and text simplification.

2. Terminology and Conceptual Complexity

• Identification and classification of specialized terms and concepts.
• Estimation of term difficulty for lay readers and second language learners.
• Use of terminological databases, ontologies, and knowledge graphs in simplification pipelines.
• Methods for adapting domain-specific terminology for accessible communication in areas such as medicine, law, and technology.

3. Generative and Explainable AI for Text Simplification

• LLM- and generative AI-based approaches to text simplification and paraphrasing.
• Terminology-Augmented Generation (TAG) and term-preserving simplification methods.
• Evaluation of generative outputs, including readability, factuality, terminology fidelity, and hallucination analysis.
• Readability-controlled and difficulty-controlled generation; controllable simplification models.
• Human-centered and explainable approaches to text accessibility in GenAI systems.

4. Resources, Benchmarks, and Evaluation Frameworks

• Corpora, annotation schemes, and benchmarks for text difficulty estimation and simplification.
• Datasets and methods for evaluating terminology-aware simplification and explanation.
• FAIR and reusable resources supporting multilingual text accessibility.
• Evaluation protocols and metrics for cross-lingual and cross-domain simplification and GenAI-based rewriting.

5. Applications and Case Studies

• Domain-specific simplification in areas such as healthcare, law, and scientific communication.
• Tools and systems for educational contexts, language learning, and accessible communication.
• User studies, human evaluation designs, and mixed-methods approaches to assessing text difficulty and GenAI-assisted simplification.
• Industrial and real-world experiences integrating automatic text simplification and terminology into LLM-based workflows.

Important Dates

Program

The DeTermIt! 2026 Workshop will take place on May 11 (afternoon).

Keynote Speaker

We have the pleasure to announce the following keynote speaker:

Horacio Saggion

Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain

Title: Text Simplification as a Tool for Facilitating Democratic Participation in the iDEM Project

Short-bio

Horacio Saggion is chair in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the Department of Information & Communication Technologies, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), Barcelona, Spain. He was appointed by UPF in 2010 as a Ramón y Cajal research fellow from the Spanish Ministry of Science and he was promoted to full professor in 2021. Horacio is director of the TALN Natural Language Processing Group where he works in several areas of Natural Language Processing (NLP) automatic text summarization, text simplification, NLP for Sign Languages, information extraction, figurative language, sentiment analysis and related topics. His work combines symbolic and statistical techniques. He has coordinated/participated in projects from different national and international organizations. He also collaborates with the industry through contracts, projects and Doctoral PhDs. Horacio is the project coordinator of the Horizon Europe funded project iDEM - Innovative and Inclusive Democratic Spaces for Deliberation and Participation - principal investigator of the Horizon Europe IDEAL project - Inclusive Democratic Engagement and Language Technologies in Europe and co-investigator in the AI-BOOST project.

Program Outline

Monday, May 11th, 2026

• 14:00 - 14:15 Opening and welcome
  
  
• 14:15 - 15:00 Invited Speaker: Horacio Saggion
  
  
• 15:00 - 16:00 Session: Oral Presentations 1
  • 15:00 - 15:15 A Benchmark for Overgeneration Detection in Biomedical Text Simplification
    Berkay Chakar, Liana Ermakova and Jaap Kamps
  • 15:15 - 15:30 Conplext 1.0: A Multilingual Lexical Complexity Prediction Dataset for L2 Learning
    David Alfter and Jasper Degraeuwe
  • 15:30 - 15:45 From Complexity to Inclusivity: A Methodology for Drafting Patient-Centered Explanations of Gut-Brain Axis Concepts
    Vanessa Bonato, Federica Vezzani and Giorgio Maria Di Nunzio
  • 15:45 - 16:00 Translation as Augmentation: Effect of Translated Data on Assessment of Difficulty
    Yiheng Wu, Jue Hou and Roman Yangarber
    
    
• 16:00 - 16:45 Session: Poster Presentations and Coffee Break
  
  
• 16:45 - 18:00 Session: Oral Presentations 2
  • 16:45 - 17:00 Automatic Generation of Graded Texts in Old Church Slavonic
    Iglika Nikolova-Stoupak, Gaël Lejeune, Aliona Shestakova-Stukun and Eva Schaeffer-Lacroix
  • 17:00 - 17:15 A Calibrated and Interpretable Framework for Multilingual Text Difficulty Prediction
    Voula Giouli, George Tsoulouhas, Athina Sioupi and Stamatia Michalopoulou
  • 17:15 - 17:30 Terminology-Augmented Generation for Intangible Cultural Heritage: A Controlled LLM-Based Translation Framework
    Wanda Punzi Zarino and Pilar Sánchez Gijón
  • 17:30 - 17:40 Assessing Small Language Models as Text Simplification Evaluators (short paper)
    David Carranza Navarrete, Jan Bakker and Jaap Kamps
  • 17:40 - 17:55 Cross-linguistic Readability and Controllable Difficulty: A Corpus-Based Comparison of Human and LLM Translations of Children’s Literature in Romanian (online presentation)
    Karla Csuros, Madalina Chitez and Roxana Rogobete
  • 17:55 - 18:00 Closing and Farewell

Organization

Workshop Chairs

Scientific Committee

• Florian Boudin – Nantes University, France
• Lynne Bowker – Université Laval, Canada
• Sara Carvalho – Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal
• Rute Costa – Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Portugal
• Eric Gaussier – University Grenoble Alpes, France
• Natalia Grabar – CNRS, France
• Ana Ostroški Anić – Institute for the Croatian Language and, Croatia
• Tatiana Passali – Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
• Grigorios Tsoumakas – Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
• Sara Vecchiato – University of Udine, Italy
• Cornelia Wermuth – KU Leuven, Belgium

Venue

DeTermIt! 2026 will be held in conjunction with the 15th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2026) at the Palau de Congressos de Palma in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. The workshop will be organised as part of the official LREC workshop programme.

For information on registration, accommodation, and travel, please refer to the main conference website: https://lrec2026.info/.

Contact

For any questions regarding the workshop, please contact the organizers at:
giorgiomaria.dinunzio@unipd.it.