Submissions for special sessions are invited for Interspeech 2024.

Special Sessions should cover interdisciplinary topics and/or important new emerging areas of interest in speech communication. Submissions related to the special focus of the conference’s theme, Speech and Beyond, are particularly welcome. Proposals should describe why the topic is relevant to the conference regular topics, and if applicable, to conference’s theme. Special Sessions may include Challenges.

Each special session proposal must contain the following information:

• Title of the proposed special session
• 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 cannot be 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 a regular session, e.g., panel discussion, longer summary talks, or a mixed thereof. In the proposal, the session format should be clearly defined (panel, oral, posters, etc.).
• Additional or non-standard resources (e.g., data, equipment, poster stands, etc.) required for organizing the special session.

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 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. Special Session organizers will be involved in the reviewer assignment and in the final decisions.

Note that the ISCA board has decided that challenges/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: Mathew Magimai Doss (Idiap Research Institute, Switzerland) and Elizabeth Shriberg (Ellipsis Health, USA) at specialsessions@interspeech2024.org.