URSW 2012: Call for Papers

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CALL FOR PAPERS

8th International Workshop on
Uncertainty Reasoning for the Semantic Web (URSW 2012)
http://c4i.gmu.edu/ursw/2012

In conjunction with the
11th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2012)

Boston, USA
November 11-12, 2012
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You are invited to participate in the upcoming workshop on Uncertainty Reasoning for the Semantic Web (URSW), to be held as part of the 11th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) in November of 
2012 at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel & Towers, USA.

ISWC is a major international forum for presenting visionary research on all aspects of the Semantic Web. The Uncertainty Reasoning Workshop 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 limited 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 developers, OWL-API 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 31, 2012     Paper submissions due
August 21         Paper acceptance notification
September 10      Camera-ready papers due
November 11-12    URSW 2012

SUBMISSION DETAILS

The URSW workshop 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 2012 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: https://www.easychair.org/account/signin.cgi?conf=ursw2012. Papers must be 
formatted in the style of the Springer publications format for Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS). This is the very same format adopted by the ISWC 2011. For complete details, see Springer's 
Author Instructions (http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0).

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 4 pages. Following the general acceptance rules of the ISWC 2012 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 2012 will be a full-day workshop divided into 4 sessions. The first session will start with the workshop's keynote presentation, which will be followed by technical paper presentations. Sessions 
two and three will be devoted to presenting our selected technical and position papers, while the remaining session will be planned in a format that invites an open debate on results, conclusions, and 
recommendations. We plan to convey a work meeting after the workshop, if the last session needs to be extended.

All papers accepted to URSW 2012 will be presented during the workshop and published in the workshop proceedings. Authors of accepted technical papers will have 20 minutes to present their work, while 
authors of accepted position papers will have a 10-minute slot to share their ideas. After each presentation, 5 minutes will be allocated to questions from the audience. Both technical and position 
papers will be published in the URSW workshop proceedings, to be available after the ISWC 2012 Conference.

In addition, technical papers accepted for presentation at URSW 2012 will be eligible for participating in an international journal special issue or in a post-proceedings book.

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

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

Fernando Bobillo - University of Zaragoza, Spain
Rommel N. Carvalho - George Mason University, USA
Paulo C. G. Costa - George Mason University, USA
Nicola Fanizzi - University of Bari, Italy
Kathryn B. Laskey - George Mason University, USA
Kenneth J. Laskey - MITRE Corporation, USA
Thomas Lukasiewicz - University of Oxford, UK
Trevor Martin - University of Bristol, UK
Matthias Nickles - Technical University of Munich, Germany
Michael Pool - Vertical Search Works, Inc., USA

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

The confirmed members of the program committee are the following (in
alphabetical order):

Fernando Bobillo - Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain
Silvia Calegari - University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy
Rommel N. Carvalho - George Mason University, USA
Davide Ceolin - VU University Amsterdam, Netherlands
Paulo C. G. Costa - George Mason University, USA
Fabio G. Cozman - Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil
Nicola Fanizzi - University of Bari, Italy
Marcelo Ladeira - University of Brasilia, Brazil
Kathryn B. Laskey - George Mason University, USA
Kenneth J. Laskey - MITRE Corporation, USA
Thomas Lukasiewicz - University of Oxford, UK
Trevor Martin - University of Bristol, UK
Matthias Nickles - University of Bath, UK
Rafael Peñaloza - Technical University Dresden, Germany
Michael Pool - Vertical Search Works, Inc., USA
Livia Predoiu - University of Magdeburg, Germany
Guilin Qi - Southeast University, China
Célia Ralha - University of Brasilia, Brazil
Dave Robertson - University of Edinburgh, UK
Daniel Sánchez  - European Centre for Soft Computing, Spain
Sergej Sizov - University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany
Giorgos Stoilos - National and Technical University of Athens, Greece
Umberto Straccia - ISTI-CNR, Pisa, Italy
Matthias Thimm - Universität Koblenz, Germany
Andreas Tolk - Old Dominion University, USA
Peter Vojtas - Charles University, Czech Republic

We are looking forward to seeing you in Boston!