Text Simplification for Scientific Information Access

Modern information access systems hold the promise to give users direct access to key information from authoritative primary sources such as scientific literature, but non-experts tend to avoid these sources due to their complex language, internal vernacular, or lacking prior background knowledge. Text simplification approaches can remove some of these barriers, thereby avoiding that users rely on shallow information in sources prioritizing commercial or political incentives rather than the correctness and informational value. The CLEF 2021 SimpleText track will address the opportunities and challenges of text simplification approaches to improve scientific information access head-on. We aim to provide appropriate data and benchmarks, starting with pilot tasks in 2021, and create a community of NLP and IR researchers working together to resolve one of the greatest challenges of today.