Special Journal Issue IEEE TKDE: Call for Contributions

Dear Colleagues,

Please consider to participate in RuleML-2008  
(http://2008.ruleml.org/) which will be in about 3 weeks in Orlando,  
Florida, collocated with the world largest Business Rules Forum.

We have a very interesting program with renowned speakers, a  
prestigious rules Challenge, a special session + panel about Rule  
standards, etc.

We are also editing a special issue of IEEE TKDE. Please consider to  
contribute to this issue and forward the open call for contributions  
(below) to your interested colleagues.

Thanks,

Adrian


[ our apologies should you receive this message more than one time ]

===========================================================================
                               CALL FOR Contributions

       Rule Representation, Interchange and Reasoning in Distributed,
                         Heterogeneous Environments

     Special Issue of IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering

      Guest Editors: N. Bassiliades, G. Governatori, A. Paschke, J.  
Dix  
===========================================================================

In recent years rule based technologies have enjoyed remarkable  
adoption in two areas: (1) Business Rule Processing and (2)  
Web-Centered Reasoning. The first trend is caused by the software  
development life cycle, which needs to be accelerated at reduced cost.  
The second trend is related to the Semantic Web and Service-oriented  
technologies, which aim to turn the Web into a huge repository of  
cross-referenced, machine-understandable data and processes. For both  
trends, rules can be used to extract, derive, transform, and integrate  
information in a platform-independent manner.
While early rule engines and environments were complex, expensive to  
maintain, and not very user friendly, the current generation of rule  
technology provides enhanced usability, scalability and performance,  
and is less costly. A general advantage of using rules is that they  
are usually represented in a platform independent manner, often using  
XML. This fits well into today's distributed, heterogeneous Web-based  
system environments.
Rules represented in standardized Web formats can be discovered,  
interchanged and invoked at runtime within and across Web systems, and  
can be interpreted and executed on any platform.

This special issue solicits state-of-the-art approaches, solutions and  
applications in the area of Rule Representation, Reasoning and  
Interchange in the context of distributed, (partially) open,  
heterogeneous environments, such as the Semantic Web, Intelligent  
Multi-Agent Systems, Event-Driven Architectures and Service-Oriented  
Computing. We strongly advise that solicited contributions should  
clearly identify the target class of applications they enable.


=======
Topics
=======

Original contributions, not currently under review or accepted by  
another journal, are solicited in relevant areas including (but not  
limited to) the
following:

- Rule Representation and Languages
    * Rule languages for exchanging and processing information through the
      web
    * Representation and meta-annotation of rules and rule sets for
      publication and interchange
    * Event-driven/action rule languages and models
    * Rule-based event processing languages and rule-based complex event
      processing
    * Modeling of executable rule specifications and tool support
    * Natural-language processing of rules
    * Graphical processing, modeling and rendering of rules
    * Rules in web 2.0, web 3.0, semantic web technologies and web
      intelligence research


- Reasoning and Rule Engines
    * Execution models, rule engines, and environments
    * Rule-based (multi-valued) reasoning with and representing uncertain
      and fuzzy information
    * Rule-based reasoning with non-monotonic negation, modalities, deontic,
      temporal, priority, scoped or other rule qualifications
    * Rule-based default reasoning with default logic, defeasible logic, and
      answer set programming
    * Compilation vs. interpretation approaches of rules
    * Hybrid rule systems


- Rule Interchange and Integration
    * Interchange and refactoring of rule bases in heterogeneous execution
      environments
    * Rule-based agility and its role in middleware
    * Communication between rule based systems using interchange formats and
      processing / communication middleware
    * Information integration of external data and domain knowledge into rules
    * Homogeneous and heterogeneous integration of rules and ontologies
    * Extraction and reengineering of platform-independent, interchangeable
      rules and rule models from existing platform-specific resources
    * Rule interchange standards and related industry interchange formats
    * Incorporation of rule technology into distributed enterprise
      application architectures
    * Interoperation between different rule formats and ontological domain
      conceptualization
    * Translation of interchangeable and domain-independent rule formats and
      rule models into executable technical rule specifications


- Rule Engineering and Repositories
    * Verification and validation of interchanged rule bases in
      heterogeneous execution environments
    * Practical solutions tackling the real-world software engineering
      requirements of rule-based systems in open, distributed environments
    * Collaborative authoring, modeling and engineering of rule
      specifications and rule repositories
    * Management and maintenance of distributed rule bases and rule
    repositories during their lifecycle


- Web Rule Applications
    * Applications and integration of rules in web standards
    * Applications of rules in the semantic web and pragmatic web
    * Applications based on (semantic) web rule standardization or
      standards-proposing efforts
    * Applications of rules in e.g. legal reasoning, compliance rules,
      security, government, security, risk management, trust and proof
      reasoning, etc.
    * E-contracting and automated negotiations with rule-based declarative
      strategies
    * Specification, execution and management of rule-based policies and
      electronic contracts
    * Rule-based software agents and (web) services
    * Theoretical and/or empirical evaluation of rule-based system
      performance and scalability


=======================
Submission Guidelines
=======================

Prospective authors should prepare manuscripts according to the Information
for Authors as published in recent issues of the journal or at
http://www.computer.org/tkde/. Note that mandatory over-length page charges
and color charges will apply.
Manuscripts should be submitted through the online IEEE manuscript
submission system at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cs-ieee.
Updated information of this call can be found at
http://lpis.csd.auth.gr/publications/tkde-si/.


=======================
Schedule
=======================

Deadline for paper submission:     March 1, 2009
Completion of first review:    June 19, 2009
Minor/Major revision due:    August 21, 2009
Final decision notification:     November 6, 2009
Publication materials due:     December 4, 2009
Publication date (tentative):     July 2010


=======================
Guest Editors
=======================

Nick Bassiliades, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
nbassili AT csd.auth.gr

Guido Governatori, NICTA, Australia
guido.governatori AT nicta.com.au

Adrian Paschke, Free University Berlin, Corporate Semantic Web, Germany
paschke AT inf.fu-berlin.de

Jurgen Dix, Clausthal University of Technology, Germany
dix AT tu-clausthal.de


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Received on Thursday, 9 October 2008 13:50:58 UTC