Preface to the EVALITA 2020 Proceedings Welcome to EVALITA 2020! EVALITA is the evaluation campaign of Natural Language Processing and Speech Tools for Italian. EVALITA is an initiative of the Italian Association for Computational Linguistics (AILC)1 and it is endorsed by the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AIxIA)2 and the Italian Association for Speech Sciences (AISV)3 . This volume includes the reports of both task organisers and participants to all of the EVALITA 2020 challenges. In the 2020 edition, we coordinated the organization of 14 different tasks belonging to five research areas, being: (i) Affect, Hate, and Stance, (ii) Creativity and Style, (iii) New Challenges in Long-standing Tasks, (iv) Semantics and Multimodality, Time and Diachrony. The volume is opened by an overview to the EVALITA 2020 campaign, in which we describe the tasks, provide statistics on the participants and task organizers as well as our supporting sponsors. The abstract of the keynote speech made by Preslav Nakov titled “Flattening the Curve of the COVID-19 Infodemic: These Evaluation Campaigns Can Help!” is also included in this collection. Due to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the traditional workshop was held online, where several mem- bers of the Italian NLP Community presented the results of their research. Despite the circumstances, the workshop represented an occasion for all participants from both academic institutions and private companies to disseminate their work and results and to share ideas through online sessions dedicated to each task and a general discussion during the plenary event. We carried on with the tradition of the “Best system across tasks” award. As in 2018, it represented an incentive for students, IT developers and researchers to push the boundaries of the state of the art by facing tasks in new ways, even if not winning. We would like to thank our sponsors Amazon Science4 , Bnova5 , CELI6 , European Language and Resources Association (ELRA)7 and Google Research8 for their support to the virtual event and to the prize for the best system award. Our gratitude goes also to University of Turin for hosting the online events. In addition, we sincerely thank the Best System across Tasks committee for providing their expertise and experience. Moreover, we acknowledge the AILC Board members for their trust and support, our mentor Nicole Novielli and all the chairs of the 2018 edition, who helped us during all the organization process of EVALITA 2020. We warmly thank our invited speaker Preslav Nakov for having shared his knowledge and insights with his talk. Last but not least, we would like to thank all the task organizers and participants, who made this edition special with their enthusiasm and creativity. December 2020 Valerio Basile Danilo Croce Maria Di Maro Lucia C. Passaro 1 http://www.ai-lc.it 2 http://www.aixia.it 3 http://www.aisv.it 4 https://www.amazon.science/ 5 https://www.bnova.it 6 https://www.celi.it/ 7 http://elra.info/en/ 8 https://research.google/ Chairs Valerio Basile, University of Turin Danilo Croce, University of Rome “Tor Vergata” Maria Di Maro, University of Naples “Federico II” Lucia Passaro, University of Pisa Advisor: Nicole Novielli, University of Bari “Aldo Moro” Steering Committee Chiara Alzetta, Università degli Studi di Genova Guido Anselmi, University of Milan Silvia Ballarè, Università degli Studi di Bologna Pierpaolo Basile, University of Bari Aldo Moro Cristina Bosco, University of Torino Dominique Brunato, Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale “Antonio Zampolli” - CNR Michele Cafagna, University of Pisa Annalina Caputo, Dublin City University Tommaso Caselli, University of Groningen, Netherlands Pierluigi Cassotti, University of Bari Aldo Moro Massimo Cerruti, University of Torino Cristiano Chesi, NETS-IUSS Alessandra Teresa Cignarella, University of Turin / Universitat Politècnica de València Andrea Cimino, Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale “Antonio Zampolli” - CNR Gloria Comandini, Università degli Studi di Trento Graziella De Martino, University of Bari Aldo Moro Lorenzo de Mattei, University of Pisa Felice Dell’Orletta, Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale “Antonio Zampolli” - CNR Elisa Di Nuovo, University of Torino Elisabetta Fersini, University of Milano-Bicocca Simona Frenda, University of Torino / Universitat Politècnica de València Albert Gatt, University of Malta Giulia Giorgi, University of Milan Eugenio Goria, University of Torino Lorenzo Gregori, University of Florence Andrea Iovine, University of Bari Aldo Moro Frosina Koceva, Università di Genova Mirko Lai, University of Torino Gianluca E. Lebani, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice Marco Lovetere, Ghigliottiniamo Caterina Mauri, Università degli Studi di Bologna Stefano Menini, Fondazione Bruno Kessler Alessio Miaschi, University of Pisa Martina Miliani, University for Foreigners of Siena / University of Pisa Maria Montefinese, University of Padua Simonetta Montemagni, Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale “Antonio Zampolli” - CNR Johanna Monti, University of Naples ”L’Orientale” Giovanni Moretti, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Malvina Nissim, Faculty of Arts - CLCG University of Groningen Debora Nozza, Bocconi University Antonio Pascucci, L’Orientale University of Naples Viviana Patti, University of Torino Marco Polignano, University of Bari Aldo Moro Daniele P. Radicioni, University of Turin Ilir Rama, University of Milan Giulia Rambelli, University of Pisa Andrea Amelio Ravelli, ILC-CNR of Pisa Paolo Rosso, Universitat Politècnica de València Irene Russo, Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale “Antonio Zampolli” - CNR Federico Sangati, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University Manuela Sanguinetti, University of Torino Lucia Siciliani, University of Bari Aldo Moro Rachele Sprugnoli, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Marco Stranisci, Associazione Acmos Sara Tonelli, Fondazione Bruno Kessler Ilaria Torre, University of Genova Rossella Varvara, University of Florence Giulia Venturi, Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale “Antonio Zampolli” - CNR Roberto Zamparelli, Università degli Studi di Trento Best System Award committee Giuseppe Attardi, University of Pisa Francesca Chiusaroli, University of Macerata Giuseppe Castellucci, Amazon Science Gloria Gagliardi, “L’Orientale” University of Naples Nicole Novielli, University of Bari “Aldo Moro” Website Manuela Speranza, Fondazione Bruno Kessler