CFP: Workshop on Uncertainty Reasoning for the Semantic Web

---------------------------------------------------------------------
                         CALL FOR PAPERS
---------------------------------------------------------------------

      Workshop on Uncertainty Reasoning for the Semantic Web

                    In conjunction with the
             4th International Semantic Web Conference

                        Galway, Ireland
                        November 7, 2005

**********************************************************************

You are invited to participate in the upcoming workshop on Uncertainty
Reasoning  for  the Semantic Web (URSW),  to be held  as  part  of the
4th International Semantic Web Conference  (ISWC)  in November of 2005
in Galway, Ireland.

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 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 the Semantic Web.
   *  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 Seb implementa-
      tion, e.g., Jena developers, Protege and Protege-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.  Therefore, the
following list should be just an initial guide.

   *  Syntax and semantics for probability extensions to Semantic Web
      languages
   *  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
   *  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
   *  Probabilistic-friendly interface protocols as a means to  improve
      interoperability among Web services
   *  Probabilistic 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 probabilistic inference
      tools
   *  The future of uncertainty reasoning for the Semantic Web


Important Dates

   *  July 30, 2005        Paper submissions due
   *  September 6, 2005    Paper acceptance notification
   *  September 27, 2005   Camera-ready papers due
   *  November 7, 2005     URSW


Submission Details

The URSW will be accepting submissions of technical papers and position
papers. Each submission will be evaluated for acceptability by at least
four members of the Program Committee. Decisions about acceptance  will
be  based  on  relevance  to the topic of Uncertainty Reasoning for the 
Semantic  Web,  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 2005 Conference,  and committed to
attend the URSW Workshop.

Technical papers  should follow the  same submission format used by the
ISWC 2005 Conference for  papers submitted  to  its  Academic  Research 
track,  i.e.,  the  Springer  Publications format  for Lecture Notes in
Computer Science (LNCS), which is 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 10
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.  Submission of position papers  should comply with  the
IJCAI  format  guidelines,  which the IJCAI  organizing  committee have
kindly allowed us to make available for download using this link:
http://www.iet.com/iswc/2005/ursw/IJCAI_format.pdf.

Further,  both technical and position papers  must be submitted  in PDF
format (Adobe's Portable Document Format).  Submission to the  Workshop
is  only  accepted  in  electronic  format  and  should  be sent to the
organizing committee via the workshop email address: ISWC_URSW@iet.com. 
Following  the general  acceptance  rules of the  ISWC2005  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

All papers accepted to the URSW will be presented  during the  workshop
and published  in the  specific  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 2005
Conference.


Program Committee

The program committee is as follows (in alphabetic order): 
   *  Paulo C. G. Costa - George Mason University, USA.
   *  Bruce D'Ambrosio - Cleverset, Inc., USA.
   *  Yoshio Fukushige - Matshushita Electric Industrial Co., Japan. W3C Fellow.
   *  Kathryn B. Laskey - George Mason University, USA.
   *  Kenneth J. Laskey - MITRE Corporation, USA. Member of the W3C advisory board.
   *  Anders Madsen - Hugin Expert A/S, Denmark.
   *  Scott Marshall - Universiteit van Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
   *  Bill McDaniel - Adobe Systems, Inc., USA.
   *  Leo Obrst - MITRE Corporation, USA.
   *  Yun Peng - University of Maryland, Baltimore County, USA.
   *  Michael Pool - Information Extraction & Transport, Inc., USA.
   *  Masami Takikawa - Information Extraction & Transport, Inc., USA.

Organizing Committee

The organizing committee is as follows (in alphabetic order): 
   *  Paulo C. G. Costa - George Mason University
   *  Kathryn B. Laskey - George Mason University, USA.
   *  Kenneth J. Laskey - MITRE Corporation
   *  Michael Pool - Information Extraction & Transport, Inc.

We are looking forward to seeing you in Ireland!