Dear community!
We are delighted to invite you for submission to the 5th Workshop on NLP
for Positive Impact co-located at EMNLP 2026!
Workshop website: https://sites.google.com/view/nlp4positiveimpact https://sites.google.com/view/nlp4positiveimpactCall for paper: https://sites.google.com/view/nlp4positiveimpact/call-for-papers-2026
Submission methods: OpenReview both direct submissions and ARR May Cycle commitment. We also accept non-archival submissions.
Important dates:
ARR May Cycle Submission Due: May 25th, 2026 Direct Submissions Due: June 26th, 2026 via https://openreview.net/group?id=EMNLP/2026/Workshop/NLP4PIhttps://openreview.net/group?id=EMNLP/2026/Workshop/NLP4PI#tab-your-consoles
ARR Reviewed Submissions Commitment Due: July 26th, 2026 (tentative) Notification of Acceptance (both channels): August 15th, 2026 Camera-Ready Papers Due: September 10th, 2026 Workshop Date: October 24th-29th 2026 (co-located with EMNLP 2026)
All deadlines are 11:59 PM (Anywhere on Earth)
Workshop Summary
The increasing adoption of language-oriented AI systems offers unprecedented opportunities for positive societal impact. NLP technologies have matured to the point where they can meaningfully contribute to addressing global challenges like poverty, hunger, healthcare, education, inequality, COVID-19, and climate change, aligning with the UN sustainability goals.
This workshop aims to advance innovative NLP research that benefits society, emphasizing responsible methods and impactful applications. We welcome submissions in areas including, but not limited to:
* Grounding NLP in Real-World Impact: Beyond improving model performance, how can NLP systems be directly tied to social outcomes? This could include case studies of real-world deployments or strategies for better deployment and maintenance practices.
* Underexplored Applications: While NLP for healthcare and mental well-being is well-established, we encourage research tackling overlooked areas such as poverty, hunger, energy, and climate change.
* Interdisciplinary Collaborations: We highly value work that integrates insights from other fields, such as social science, political science, economics, philanthropy, and HCI, and we encourage submissions of case studies or examples that highlight such collaborations.
Special Theme: Measuring the Societal Impact of AI and NLP
This year we would like to find an answer to the question: How can we measure the social impact of AI and NLP? With even the bigger raise of opportunities of AI and language technologies, we would like to understand how it influences society and if in positive manners. Position, philosophical-grounded, and new evaluation framework suggestion papers are very much welcomed to enhance the discussion!
Submission Types
We encourage diverse contributions, including:
* Identifying social needs and affected demographics.
* Proposing new tasks or directions through position papers.
* Conducting literature reviews or philosophical discussions on NLP’s societal impact.
* Designing user studies, surveys, or ethical frameworks.
* Exploring interdisciplinary methods and collaboration strategies.
Submissions must address the ethical and societal implications of the work, with a clear focus on defining and achieving positive impact. We look forward to fostering discussions that inspire actionable, responsible advancements in NLP for the greater good.
Papers Format
Both long and short paper submissions should follow all of the ARR
submission requirements
https://aclrollingreview.org/cfp#paper-submission-information, including: Long Papers https://aclrollingreview.org/cfp#long-papers (8 pages) and Short Papers (4 pages).
Organizers
Katherine Atwell (Northeastern University) Angana Borah (University of Michigan) Dr. Daryna Dementieva (Technical University of Munich)
Prof Elisa Kreiss (University of California) Dr. Neema Kotonya (Dataminr) Jiarui Liu (Carnegie Mellon University) Liz Olson (Dataminr) Ruyuan Wan (Pennsylvania State University) Prof Jieyu Zhao (University of Southern California)
Steering Committee
Prof Rada Mihalcea (University of Michigan) Dr. Joel Tetreault (Dataminr) Dr. Zhijing Jin (University of Toronto)
Contact Email: nlp4pi.workshop@gmail.commailto:nlp4pi.workshop@gmail.com
All positive regards,
Daryna Dementieva
On behalf of NLP4PI Workshop Organizers