CfP - Special Issue - Journal of IT&T - Semantic Web Technologies and Applications

JOURNAL OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & TOURISM (JITT) SPECIAL ISSUE ON

       "Semantic Web Technologies and Applications"

                Deadline: August 31, 2004

                    CALL FOR PAPERS


Semantic Web technologies and applications facilitate the
management and interoperation of semantically diverse information
landscapes. To this end, Semantic Web technologies provide methods
and standards that allow for abstracting from syntactic
ideosyncrasies into semantically meaningful descriptions of data
and services, accurate access to information as well as
flexibility to comply to needs of information system users and
administrators.

The tourism industry has been an early adopter of innovative
software in previous decades such as shown in early travel booking
systems or Web-based electronic commerce. Such early take-up of
technology is due to a number of characteristics of the tourism
industry: Its products are complex; A tourism product will perish
if it is not sold in time; The tourism industry depends on complex
value creation chains involving a large number of participants
(travel agencies, tour operators, hotels, etc.); And, participants
in these value creation chains change frequently and rapidly.

Due to these reasons, the ideal tourism information systems
    + Require a lot of flexibility of underlying systems;
    + Comprise accurate access to virtually any tourism service
        provider; and
    + Are usable by corporate and private customers alike.

As is obvious to any user and any manager of tourism information
systems these objectives are far from being achieved by current
systems.

Semantic Web technologies are rapidly maturing and currently step
from basic research into mainstream computer science technology,
such as is visible in semantics-based knowledge management,
semantic portals, semantic Web services or semantics-based
software engineering. We foresee the fruitful uptake of Semantic
Web technology and applications in tourism information systems
supporting requirements, such as mentioned above, for integration,
interoperation, accurate access and flexibility.

In this special issue, we invite papers that advance the state of
the art, exploiting semantic Web technologies and applications in
tourism information systems. We solicit papers that address, e.g.,
items from the following (incomplete) list of topics:

  - Semantic modelling
  - Interoperability
  - Semantic querying
  - Semantic portals
  - Ontologies and tourism
  - Data mining with semantic technologies
  - Semantic Web software architectures
  - E-markets exploiting semantic descriptions
  - Semantics-based matching of products and requirements
  - Semantic Web services and semantic middleware
  - Semantics and distributed computing

Time Schedule

All submissions should be sent to the editor, Steffen Staab 
(staab@aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de),
arriving not later than August 31, 2004. It is expected that the evaluation
process will be finished at the end of December, 2004.

Guidelines for Papers

To expedite the review process, all submitted manuscripts must be prepared
according to the following format:

Writing Style: The paper must be written in the third person and all
submissions must be in English. Readers need to grasp information quickly;
thus, authors should use straightforward declarative sentences, making
every effort to help readers understand the concepts presented. All
articles should be comprehensible to all readers, regardless of their areas
of specializations and academic backgrounds. Articles must have sufficient
introductory material and must be relevant to practice, stressing
meaningful applications of principles to important problems. Papers may
include tables, drawings, charts, or photographs.

Paper Length: Articles should be limited to 9.000 - 10.000 words (25-30
double-spaced typewritten pages, or 12-15 pages in the final
journal format). Each figure and table counts for approximately 300 words.

Submission Format: To facilitate blind review, no names or
affiliations must appear on the article submitted. Therefore a
separate "Cover Page" must be included with the submission. Cover page
should bear a short informative title (title/subtitle 50 letters
maximum), followed by all authors' names and affiliations. The
corresponding author should be designated, with complete mailing
address, as well as telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail address.

Article Format: The article title is repeated on the first page, which
must also include the article abstract and a list of keywords. Article
abstract should be between 110 and 120 words, including keywords, and
should state concisely what was done and why, what was found, and what
was concluded. The paper itself will be composed of three parts:
introduction, the study, and conclusion. Headed with an appropriate
title, the study (or the main body of the paper) is in turn divided
into subtitled sections.

References: In the text, references are cited using the author/date style
following the APA Publication Manual (4th ed.). Examples:

(Graburn, 1989) or (Dann & Cohen, 1991; Smith, 1987, 1989). The reference
list, placed at the end of the text, must be typed double-spaced in
alphabetical order of authors. A referenced article should contain all
authors' names, year of publication, title of the article, name of the
publication, volume, and inclusive page numbers. A referenced book should
list author name(s), year of publication, title of the book, place of
publication, and publisher per the following examples:

- Journal Article:
Chandrasekaran, B. (1991). Models versus rules, deep versus compiled,
content versus form, some Distinctions in knowledge systems research. IEEE
Expert Systems, 6(2), 75-79.

- Book:
Guariso, G., & Werthner, H. (1989). Environmental decision support systems.
Chichester: Ellis Horwood.

- Book Chapter:
Rozenblit, J. W., & Zeigler, B. P. (1986). Entity-based structures for
modeling and experimental frame construction. In M. S. Elzas, T., I. Ören,
& B. P. Zeigler (Eds.), Modeling and simulation methodology in the
artificial intelligence era (pp. 195-210). Amsterdam: North-Holland.

Please note that citations such as "personal communication''  should not be
included in the reference list, but may be added parenthetically in the
text.

Tables and Illustrations: The data in tables should be presented in columns
with non-significant decimal places omitted. The tables and figures should
each be ordered in Arabic numerals and cited in the text. Tables should
contain a brief descriptive title and short column headings. Important
details should be footnoted under each table. Each figure should have an
accompanying legend, containing descriptive and important details. In the
text, all illustrations, charts, and maps should be referred to as Figures.

In the case of photographs submit photocopies for the initial manuscript
review. Original illustrations should be submitted with the final accepted
version (photographs as slides or transparencies or as TIFF files). They
should be finished drawings (camera-ready, professionally drawn
"artworks'') not needing further work or typesetting. Do not incorporate
figures and tables within the text body. Include figures, figure legend
page(s), and tables as separate pages at the end of the manuscript.

Electronic Manuscript Submissions

Send both the "Cover Page" and the Article in electronic format -
using RTF format - to the Guest Editor (staab@aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de).
If author(s) have no Internet access, then they are invited to send 5
copies and a computer disk to the Editor:

Steffen Staab
Institute AIFB
University of Karlsruhe
76128 Karlsruhe
Germany
Phone: +49 721 6084751
Fax: +49 721 6086580
staab@aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de

Evaluation: IT&T is a refereed journal. All manuscripts are evaluated
by at least three referees from different disciplines. The paper
evaluation is double blind and anonymous: neither referees nor the
authors are aware of each other's identities.

Accepted Papers: Authors of accepted papers will be asked to sign the
"Transfer of Copyright" agreement before the article can be
published. This transfer agreement enables Cognizant Communication
Corp. (CCC) to protect the copyrighted material for the authors, but
does not relinquish the author's proprietary rights. Final accepted
paper must be formatted according to the "Instructions for
Contributions" available from http://www.cognizantcommunication.com/.

Received on Tuesday, 23 March 2004 11:03:56 UTC