CFP: 4th Workshop on Uncertainty Reasoning for the Semantic Web

CALL FOR PAPERS



4th International Workshop on
Uncertainty Reasoning for the Semantic Web

http://c4i.gmu.edu/ursw/2008



In conjunction with the

7th International Semantic Web Conference



Karlsruhe - Germany
October 26-27, 2008





You are invited to participate in the upcoming International Workshop  
on Uncertainty Reasoning for the Semantic Web (URSW), to be held as  
part of the 7th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) in  
October of 2008 in Karlsruhe - Germany.

ISWC is a major international forum for presenting visionary research  
on all aspects of the Semantic Web. The International Workshop on  
Uncertainty Reasoning for the Semantic Web is an exciting opportunity  
for collaboration and cross-fertilization between the uncertainty  
reasoning community and the Semantic Web community.

Effective methods for reasoning under uncertainty are vital for  
realizing many aspects of the Semantic Web vision, but the ability of  
current-generation web technology to handle uncertainty is extremely  
limited. Recently, there has been a groundswell of demand for  
uncertainty reasoning technology among Semantic Web researchers and  
developers.

This surge of interest creates a unique opening to bring together two  
communities with a clear commonality of interest but little history of  
interaction. By capitalizing on this opportunity, URSW could spark  
dramatic progress toward realizing the Semantic Web vision.

Audience

The intended audience for this workshop includes the following

·      Researchers in uncertainty reasoning technologies with interest  
in Semantic Web and Web-related technologies.

·      Semantic web developers and researchers.

·      People in the knowledge representation community with interest  
in the Semantic Web.

·      Ontology researchers and ontological engineers.

·      Web services researchers and developers with interest in the  
Semantic Web.

·      Developers of tools designed to support semantic web  
implementation, e.g., Jena developers, Protégé and Protégé-OWL  
developers.

Topic List

We intend to have an open discussion on any topic relevant to the  
general subject of uncertainty in the Semantic Web (including fuzzy  
theory, probability theory, and other approaches). Therefore, the  
following list should be just an initial guide.

·      Syntax and semantics for extensions to Semantic Web languages  
to enable representation of uncertainty

·      Logical formalisms to support uncertainty in Semantic Web  
languages

·      Probability theory as a means of assessing the likelihood that  
terms in different ontologies refer to the same or similar concepts

·      Architectures for applying plausible reasoning to the problem  
of ontology mapping

·      Using fuzzy approaches to deal with imprecise concepts within  
ontologies

·      The concept of a probabilistic ontology and its relevance to  
the Semantic Web

·      Best practices for representing uncertain, incomplete,  
ambiguous, or controversial information in the Semantic Web

·      The role of uncertainty as it relates to Web services

·      Interface protocols with support for uncertainty as a means to  
improve interoperability among Web services

·      Uncertainty reasoning techniques applied to trust issues in the  
Semantic Web

·      Existing implementations of uncertainty reasoning tools in the  
context of the Semantic Web

·      Issues and techniques for integrating tools for representing  
and reasoning with uncertainty

·      The future of uncertainty reasoning for the Semantic Web

Important Dates

July 25, 2008            Paper submissions due

September 5, 2008            Paper acceptance notification

September 26, 2008            Camera-ready papers due

October 26-27, 2008            4th Workshop on Uncertainty Reasoning  
for the Semantic Web

Submission Details

The URSW will be accepting submissions of technical papers and  
position papers. Each submission will be evaluated for acceptability  
by at least three members of the Program Committee. Decisions about  
acceptance will be based on relevance to the above topic list,  
originality, potential significance, topicality and clarity. Since all  
accepted papers will be presented at the workshop, we require that at  
least one of the submitting authors must be a registered participant  
at the ISWC 2008 Conference, and committed to attend the URSW Workshop.

Submissions to the Workshop are only accepted in electronic format and  
should be sent via the workshop’s submission site: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ursw2008 
. Papers must be submitted in PDF format, and follow the same  
submission format used by the ISWC 2008 Conference, the Springer  
Publications format for Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS),  
available at http://www.springeronline.com/sgw/cda/frontpage/0,11855,5-164-2-72376-0,00.html 
  .

Technical papers submitted to the URSW Workshop must not exceed 12  
pages, including figures. Submissions exceeding this limit will not be  
reviewed.

Position papers consist of a summary of ideas, projects, or any  
research efforts that are relevant to the URSW Workshop and must not  
exceed 2 pages.

Following the general acceptance rules of the ISWC 2008 conference,  
papers that, at the time of submission, are under review for or have  
already been published in or accepted for publication in a journal or  
another conference will not be accepted to the URSW workshop.



Presentation and Publication

URSW 2008 will be a full day workshop divided into four sessions. Two  
of those sessions will be devoted to a specific theme, while the  
remaining sessions will be planned in a format that invites an open  
debate on the results, conclusions, recommendations, and follow-up  
work of the W3C Uncertainty Reasoning for the World Wide Web Incubator  
Group (http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/urw3/XGR-urw3/).

All papers accepted to the URSW will be presented during the workshop  
and published in the workshop proceedings, which will be available as  
a separate publication after the Conference. Authors of accepted  
technical papers will have 20 minutes to present their work, while  
authors of accepted position papers will have a 5-minute slot to share  
their ideas.

In addition, both technical and position papers will be published in  
the URSW Workshop proceedings, to be available after the ISWC 2008  
Conference.

We are also planning to publish revised versions of selected papers in  
an LNCS volume or a
special issue of an international journal.



Program Committee

The program committee is still being formed. Currently, it as follows  
(in alphabetical order):

·    Ameen Abu-Hanna - Universiteit van Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

·      Fernando Bobillo - University of Granada, Spain.
·      Paulo C. G. Costa - George Mason University, USA.
·      Fabio G. Cozman - Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil.
·      Claudia d'Amato - University of Bari, Italy.
·      Ernesto Damiani - University of Milan, Italy.
·      Nicola Fanizzi - University of Bari, Italy.
·      Francis Fung - Eduworks, Inc., USA.
·      Kathryn B. Laskey - George Mason University, USA.
·      Kenneth J. Laskey - MITRE Corporation, USA. Member of the W3C  
Advisory Board.
·      Thomas Lukasiewicz - Oxford University, UK.
·      Anders L. Madsen - Hugin Expert A/S, Denmark.
·      M. Scott Marshall - Adaptive Information Disclosure,  
Universiteit van Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
·      Trevor Martin - University of Bristol, UK.
·      Matthias Nickles - University of Bath, UK.
·      Yung Peng - University of Maryland, Baltimore County, USA.
·      Michael Pool - Convera, Inc., USA.
·      Livia Predoiu - Universität Mannheim, Germany.
·      Dave Robertson - University of Edinburgh, UK.
·      Daniel Sánchez – University of Granada, Spain.
·      Elie Sanchez - Université de La Méditerranée Aix-Marseille II ,  
France.
·      Nematollaah Shiri - Concordia University, Canada.
·      Oreste Signori - ISTI-CNR, Manager of the W3C Office, Italy.
·      Sergej Sizov - University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany.
·      Pavel Smrz - Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic.
·      Umberto Straccia - Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologie dell'  
Informazione "A. Faedo", Italy.
·      Heiner Stuckenschmidt - Universität Mannheim, Germany.
·      Masami Takikawa - Cleverset, Inc., USA.
·      Peter Vojtas - Charles University, Czech Republic.


Organizing Committee

The organizing committee is as follows (in alphabetical order):

·    Fernando Bobillo - University of Granada, Spain.

·    Paulo C. G. Costa - George Mason University, USA.

·    Claudia d'Amato - University of Bari, Italy.

·    Nicola Fanizzi - University of Bari, Italy.

·    Kathryn Laskey - George Mason University, USA.

·    Ken Laskey – MITRE Corporation, USA.

·    Thomas Lukasiewicz - Oxford University, UK.

·    Trevor Martin - University of Bristol, UK.

·    Matthias Nickles - University of Bath, UK.

·    Michael Pool - Convera, Inc., USA.

·    Pavel Smrz - Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic.



We are looking forward to seeing you in Karlsruhe!



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ken Laskey
MITRE Corporation, M/S H305      phone: 703-983-7934
7515 Colshire Drive                         fax:       703-983-1379
McLean VA 22102-7508