Survey on manual corpus annotation tools

This is a working repository to elaborate on results from survey on manual corpora annotation tools (WG1 Task 1.4)

🛠️ How to Contribute a Tool

We welcome contributions of new tools or updates to existing ones! All tool metadata lives in YAML files under the tools/ directory. The JSON (data/latest_export.json) is generated automatically from those YAMLs through the script src/build_json.py.

1. Add a new tool

1. Copy the YAML template

   cp tools/_template.yml tools/<tool-slug>.yml
   

   • Use a short, lowercase, hyphenated slug for the filename (e.g., tools/arboratorgrew.yml).
2. Fill in the fields:
   • Text fields → fill in with a string or leave as "" if unknown.
   • Lists → use YAML lists (- item1, - item2) or [] if none.
   • Yes/No/partial → write exactly "Yes", "No", or "partial".
   • Links → full https://…. For extra resources, use Label: "URL".
3. Save and commit only this new YAML file.

Tips:

• Keep descriptions short and clear (one line in Short-description).
• If unsure, leave the field blank ("") — don’t delete the key.
• You can check an example file for inspiration, anything in the tools/ folder works

2. Update an existing tool

1. Open its YAML file in tools/
2. Edit the fields you want to update.
3. Do not change the filename unless renaming the tool.

3. Build TSV & JSON locally (optional but recommended)

If you want to check your file before opening a PR:

pip install -r src/requirements.txt
python src/build_json.py

This will regenerate:

• data/latest_export.json

4. Open a Pull Request

• Add one YAML file (for a new tool) or edit one (to update).
• Our CI will automatically run the build and validate your contribution.
• Reviewers will check the generated TSV/JSON.

Reference

If you use this resource, please cite:

Pannitto, L., Dobrovoljc, K., & Guillaume, B. (2026). Survey of Tools for Manual Linguistic Annotation: Supporting Diversity through Interactive Exploration. In Proceedings of the Fifteenth Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC 2026) (pp. 11562–11573). European Language Resources Association (ELRA). [https://doi.org/10.63317/4u4be6bbtj8e].

BibTeX:

@inproceedings{pannitto-etal-2026-survey,
  title = {Survey of Tools for Manual Linguistic Annotation: Supporting Diversity through Interactive Exploration},
  author = {Pannitto, Ludovica and Dobrovoljc, Kaja and Guillaume, Bruno},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Fifteenth Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC 2026)},
  month = {May},
  year = {2026},
  pages = {11562--11573},
  address = {Palma, Mallorca, Spain},
  publisher = {European Language Resources Association (ELRA)},
  editor = {Piperidis, Stelios and Bel, Núria and van den Heuvel, Henk and Ide, Nancy and Krek, Simon and Toral, Antonio},
  doi = {10.63317/4u4be6bbtj8e}
}

Video

Project video: Watch on YouTube