(DEADLINE EXTENSION) MOST-ONISW@ER2009: Workshop on Ontologies, Metamodels and Semantic Technologies in Information Systems

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   MOST-ONISW: Joint International Workshop on Metamodels, Ontologies,
   Semantic Technologies, and Information Systems for the Semantic Web
     An event held with ER 2009 - Intl. Conf. on Conceptual Modeling
               09-12/november/2009 - GRAMADO, RS, Brazil
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Ontology is a cross-disciplinary field concerned with the study of concepts
and theories that can be used for representing shared conceptualizations of
specific domains. Ontological Engineering is a discipline in computer and
information science concerned with the development of techniques, methods,
languages and tools for the systematic construction of concrete artifacts
capturing these representations, i.e., models (e.g., domain ontologies) and
metamodels (e.g., upper-level ontologies). In recent years, there has been a
growing interest in the application of formal ontology and ontological
engineering to solve modeling problems in diverse areas in computer science
such as software and data engineering, knowledge representation, natural
language processing, information science, among many others.

A crucial question is whether ontologies can replace information models. But
whereas ontologies work quite well as virtual schemata in mediation systems,
they may perform poorly as information models and on the user interface
level.
On the theoretical side, there is a lack of understanding of the effective
relation and interplay of ontological and epistemological features in
information models and systems. Furthermore there are still open questions
concerning good scientific practice in developing ontologies. On the
practical side, there is still a lack of good practice of how to integrate
existing information systems into ontology driven applications and few
experiences at all with creating good new data structures from ontologies
directly for interoperation in complex and diverse application environments..

The objective of MOST-ONISW 2009 is to bring together researchers and
practitioners in Information Management interested in the relation between
ontology and information models, and theoretical topics such as formal
ontology, formal logics, conceptual modelling, computational linguistics,
cognitive science, knowledge representation, the Semantic Web, and MDE
(Model-Driven Engineering), as well as more practical topics as a result of
applications of ontologies in diverse fields, such as knowledge management,
informatics for education, ontology-based information and database
integration,
e-commerce, information processing (retrieval, classification and
extraction),
to mention just a few. Among the issues are:

1. What is the difference and relation between information models and
ontologies?
Which criteria must ontologies match in order to provide a sound basis for
an
information system? How to interact and relate the ways of knowing and what
can be known with the form of knowledge in information systems? Are there
systematic kinds of information elements associated with information
management
processes that are not of ontological nature? What is the epistemological
impact on ontologies?

2. How should we construct ontologies from information models for semantic
interoperability, and create and manage mapping specifications for
mediators,
data transformation systems, Web service wrappers via ontologies. What are
the
characteristic cases of heterogeneity and how can they be managed
generically.
What are the languages and tools for mapping and transformation algorithm
generators?

3. How can we effectively enable domain experts to specify the semantics of
their
information systems in order to exploit Semantic Web technology? How can we
visualize the ontology and mapping information in a user-friendly way?

4. How can we make effective information models, i.e. database schemata,
data entry forms, Web service interfaces, and simplified query interfaces
from ontologies? Ontologies can help to objectively describe the loss of
information and reasoning capabilities due to necessary simplifications in
information structures. What are the problems, mechanisms, and rules in
order to preserve semantic interoperability?

5. How does argumentation and information system content relate? Current
argumentation models, systems for collaborative work model and Web2.0
applications visualize the flow of arguments or register resulting
propositions,
but do not model how argumentation operates on information
system contents expressed in terms of ontologies, so that a full
externalization of multiple arguments and understanding of their integrated
effect
on information system contents can be achieved.

6. What is the relation between formal ontologies and natural languages? How
can we link knowledge represented in an ontological way to every day
language? Can we map layperson communication to domain expert-governed
ontologies?

7. How should we utilize ontologies and conceptual modelling for data
management,
integration and interoperability in Semantic web applications, particularly
in e-science, life sciences, e-business and cultural applications?
What are architectures and models of good practice? Are there
domain-overarching global
core ontologies? What are their characteristics?

8. What is semantics? Are semantics logical formulae? Is ontological
commitment a set of formulae or an interpretation function to real world
things and phenomena in the user’s mind? What role does ontological
commitment
play in conceptual modelling and database integration?

Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit theoretical, technical
and practical research contributions that directly or indirectly address the
issues above. Particularly welcome are e-science, life-sciences, e-business
and cultural applications. The workshop foresees a technical discussion on
the relation
of ontologies and conceptual modelling.


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 TOPICS OF INTEREST
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- Ontology Engineering
 - methodologies,
 - capture and learning
 - management

- Ontology and Conceptual Modeling
 - Ontological Foundations for Conceptual Modeling and Metamodeling
 - Ontology-Based Conceptual Modeling Tools and Environments
 - Ontologies and Organizational Modeling
 - Conceptual modeling for the Semantic Web
 - Ontology design and maintenance for conceptual model integration

- Semantic consistency
 - foundational ontologies
 - upper-level ontologies
 - evaluation methods, applications and problems

- Semantic Interoperability
 - composition and modularity
 - merging, mapping and alignment
 - ontology language interoperability
 - Global ontologies and Local as View (LAV) integration methods, problems
and practice

- Enhancement of ontology applicability
 - linguistic ontologies applied to text processing
 - patterns of ontologies for specific applications

- Ontologies for Information Sharing
 - ontology-based information integration
 - mediators and brokers
 - agents and ontologies
 - Ontology-based data transformation and data migration tools.
 - Ontology-enabled interoperability in e-science, life sciences,
e-business, culture
 - User friendly semantic system integration tools

- Ontology Applications
 - the Semantic Web
 - knowledge management
 - e-commerce, e-government
 - e-learning and e-science - agents and multiagents patterns and
applications
 - information retrieval, extraction and classification

- Ontologies and Semantic Technologies in Education
- Ontologies and natural language processing
- Ontology visualization
- Ontology and epistemology in information systems
- Expert ontologies and layperson communications
- Schema transformation
- Domain specific heterogeneity analysis between data structures and
ontologies
- Ontology-based query mediation
- Querying the Semantic Web
- Ontology-driven application system and Web service design
- Argumentation models (Web2.0) for information system contents maintenance
- Reverse engineering of ontologies from conceptual models
- Core ontologies and global models, applications and limitations
- Lessons learnt and experience from large-scale integration projects.
- Architectures and good practice of ontology-based integrated application
environments
- Applications of above topics to e-science, e-business, and life sciences


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 SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
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Since the proceedings will be published by Springer in the LNCS series,
authors must
submit manuscripts using the LNCS style. See this site for style files and
details.
The suggested number of pages is 10, and the maximum number of pages is 10.
Manuscripts
not submitted in the LNCS style or having more than 10 pages will not be
reviewed and
thus automatically rejected. A paper submitted to MOST-ONISW 2009 cannot be
under review
for any other conference or journal during the time it is being considered
for MOST-ONISW
2009. Papers must be submitted as pdf files.

All MOST-ONISW workshop papers should be submitted to the EasyChair system
for MOST-ONISW 2009:
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mostonisw2009

==========================
 IMPORTANT DATES
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Papers due:   May,4th 2009 (11:59pm EST)
Notification: June 15th, 2009
Camera ready: June 29th, 2009


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 ORGANIZATION
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Workshop Organisation committee

 Martin Doerr, Foundation for Research and Technology, Greece
 Fred Freitas, Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil
 Giancarlo Guizzardi, Federal University of Espírito Santo, Brazil
 Hyoil Han, Drexel University, USA