A GitHub-based Workflow for Annotated Resource Development

AbstractComputational linguists have long recognized the value of version control systems such as Git (and related platforms, e.g., GitHub) when it comes to managing and distributing computer code. However, the benefits of version control remain under-explored for a central activity within computational linguistics: the development of annotated natural language resources. We argue that researchers can employ version control practices to make development workflows more transparent, efficient, consistent, and participatory. We report a proof-of-concept, GitHub-based solution which facilitated the creation of a legal English treebank.