New Forms of Reasoning for the Semantic Web (NEFORS2008): Extended Deadling and Last Call for Papers

[Apologies for cross and multiple postings]

========= *DEADLINE EXTENSION and LAST CALL FOR PAPERS* ==============

Second International Workshop:
"New forms of reasoning for the Semantic Web:
scalable, tolerant and dynamic"

http://nefors08.larkc.eu

Co-located with the 3rd Asian Semantic Web Conference (ASWC 2008)
http://www.aswc2008.org/

Bangkok, Thailand, 8th-11th December 2008

=====================================================================


Workshop Objectives
===================
The Semantic Web is the vision of a Web of data usable for both humans
but also machines. This web, consists of inter-connected instance data
annotated with possibly expressive ontologies.  Therefore a tremendous
amount of information becomes available that should be processed based
on formal semantics attached to it. The Semantic Web community has 
developed
a number of languages (such as RDF, RDF Schema, OWL) that deploy logic
for this purpose. Impressive progress has been made on scalable storage,
querying and inference for these languages, and they are successfully
being deployed on large intranets and medium-scale web-applications.

However existing reasoning techniques often fail to live up to the 
expectations
put into them in this context. They can often neither deal with high 
number of
instances, the expressiveness of the ontologies describing them or the 
inherent
inconsistency and incompleteness of data on the Web.

This workshop is intended to focus on these problems of scalability and
robustness of reasoning on the Web, and furthermore to investigate 
alternative
reasoning methods, which take incompleteness and distribution of data and
knowledge as inherent properties into account.

NeForS08 is the follow-up of the first international workshop on
"New forms of reasoning for the Semantic Web: scalable, tolerant and 
dynamic",
which took place in Busan, Korea in November 2007 and was co-located 
with the
6th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2007) and 2nd Asian 
Semantic
Web Conference (ASWC 2007).


Topics of Interest
==================
We welcome all research contributions that address one or more of the
following topics:

* Reasoning for the Web
* Querying and searching
* Scalability to the Web level
* Efficient storage of structured data that scale to a very large size

We also aim to attract participants from scientific fields not typically 
seen
at Semantic Web events:

* Economics can tell us about cost-benefit trade-off models, sunk-cost 
theory
and the role of negotiation in obtaining near-optimal results under 
bounded resources
* Cognitive Science can tell us about strategies of human memory and 
human reasoning
which is so succesful in reaching good enough conclusion in limited 
time-spans, using
methods such as priming, attention scoping, recency-based 
self-optimising memory, etc.
* Computational Learning Theory has contributions to make with their 
notions of Probably
Approximately Correct (PAC) computing, and strategies for abstraction and
compression of information.
* Combinatorial Search has made recent breakthroughs in handling massive 
search-spaces
with heuristics based on Monte Carlo simulations.


Event Information
=================
The workshop will take place during the 3rd Asian Semantic Web 
Conference (ASWC2008)
as a full-day event. It will be organized as a full day event and 
include an invited
talk on the industrial view on semantic technologies and the need for 
large-scale reasoning.

Please note that for every accepted paper at least one of the authors 
must attend the
workshop and must register for the workshop and the main conference.
Submission of a paper is not required for attendance at the workshop. 
However, in the event
that the workshop cannot accommodate all who would like to participate, 
those who have
submitted a paper will be given priority.


Submissions
===========
The workshop invites full papers (up to 15 pages) as well as short 
papers (up to 5 pages).
All contributions will be peer reviewed by the program commitee (see 
http://nefors08.larkc.eu)
and accepted submissions will be published in a dedicated book. The 
number of accepted papers
will be kept deliberately low in order to leave sufficient time for 
discussion after presentations.
Additionally  we are considering a special issue in a journal on 
semantic computing for extended
versions of selected, high quality submissions.

Submitted papers must be written in English and one of the following 
format must be used for
the first submission: PDF, PS, DOC. For submissions please follow LNCS 
formatting instructions
(see http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-2-72376-0 for 
details) to prepare your
paper and consider using the camera ready format even for the first 
submission.

Furthermore papers need to be submitted electronically through the 
EasyChair using the following link:
http://www.easychair.org/conferences?conf=nefors08


Important Dates
===============
* September 28, 2008: Submission of papers [*extended*]
* October 8, 2008: Notification of acceptance
* October 15, 2008: Camera-ready version due
* December 8, 2008: Workshop


Organizers
==========
Zhisheng Huang, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Uwe Keller, Semantic Technology Institute, University of Innsbruck, Austria
Ning Zhong, Maebashi Institute of Technology, Japan and The 
International WIC Institute/BJUT, China

Program Committee
=================

     * Ruzica Piskac, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland
     * Guilin Qi, Institut für Angewandte Informatik und Formale 
Beschreibungsverfahren (AIFB), Karlsruhe, Germany
     * Stefan Schlobach, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
     * Lael Schooler, MPI for Human Development, Berlin, Germany
     * Pascal Hitzler, Institut für Angewandte Informatik und Formale 
Beschreibungsverfahren (AIFB), Karlsruhe, Germany
     * Yue Pan, IBM Research Laboratory, Beijing, China
     * Xiaoping Chen, University of Science and Technology of China, 
Hefei, China
     * Emanuele Della Valle, CEFRIEL, Milano, Italy
     * Stefania Galizia, Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University, 
Milton Keynes, United Kingdom
     * Michael Witbrock, Cycorp, Austin, Texas, USA
     * Juanzi Li, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
     * Ilya Zaihrayeu, University of Trento, Trento, Italy
     * Anupriya Ankolekar, Institut für Angewandte Informatik und 
Formale Beschreibungsverfahren (AIFB), Karlsruhe, Germany
     * Cristina Feier, Knowledge-Based Systems Group, Technical 
University of Viennna, Vienna, Austria
     * Stijn Heymans, Knowledge-Based Systems Group, Technical 
University of Viennna, Vienna, Austria
     * Kyung-Il Tony Lee, Saltlux Inc., Seoul, Korea
     * Anita Raja, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, 
North Carolina, USA
     * Jia Hu, Bejing University of Technology, Bejing, China


Steering Committee
===================
Dieter Fensel, Semantic Technology Institute, University of Innsbruck, 
Austria
Frank van Harmelen, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands


Contact
=======
Florian Fischer
Semantic Technology Institute, University of Innsbruck, Austria
Technikerstr. 21a, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
E florian.fischer@sti2.at

Received on Tuesday, 16 September 2008 11:14:45 UTC