Data Availability and Evaluation Reproducibility for Automatic Date Detection in Texts, a Survey

Abstract

Automatic date detection in texts has been applied to various languages and periods in research related to digital humanities. In this article, we investigate the availability of the datasets used in published experiments including a date detection component. We take a closer look at c. two dozen of the newest articles. Primarily, for each of the two dozen articles, we examine the possibility of acquiring the used dataset based on the information presented in the article itself. Secondarily, we examine the possibility of reproducing the exact evaluation setting described in the articles, e.g., the possibility of dividing the dataset into the same training and testing portions. We find that, as far as the datasets are involved, we would be able to reproduce the evaluation setting of four of the articles using the information in the articles themselves.