PLABA 2024 @ TREC: A Chance to Simplify Biomedical Abstracts in Plain Language

The Plain Language Adaptation of Biomedical Abstracts (PLABA) task for 2024 at TREC is now open for participation. The goal of this task is to rewrite biomedical abstracts in plain language, making them accessible to the general public. This involves simplifying and splitting sentences, replacing or omitting jargon, and providing further background where appropriate.

New for this year is the expert term replacement subtask. Participants will identify expert terms, classify how they should be replaced, and generate replacement text. This subtask is designed to allow for participation with fewer compute resources.

By participating in PLABA, you will get access to a unique, manually annotated expert term replacement dataset and manual evaluations of system outputs by science communication experts.

For more information, visit PLABA task descriptions, register at NIST’s evaluation base, and join the PLABA mailing list.