Friday, January 22, 2010

CfP: Web-scale Semantic Information Processing

Web-scale Semantic Information Processing

Note revised dates
One of the greatest challenges for the Semantic Web is achieving web-scale. While the information retrieval community has developed successful strategies for coping with the scale of the web using statistical techniques, semantic web technologies are still struggling with scaling up to the web as such. This is in part due to the need to preserve the data’s structure and the need to perform various forms of reasoning in order to more effectively leverage the available information. The need to handle vast amounts of structured data on the web is now widely recognized and efforts like the Billion Triples Challenge have been launched to advance the state of the art with this respect.
For this special issue, we seek papers that present algorithms and architectures that help semantic web systems achieve any form of scalability possessed by contemporary, state-of-the-art web applications, including, but not limited to:
  • answering queries and/or reasoning with billions of triples
  • operating over hundreds of ontologies or schemas simultaneously
  • supporting hundreds of thousands of users and/or concurrently handling semantic web requests from thousands of users
Accepted papers will have to provide detailed descriptions of their algorithms, architectures, and data structures and include systematic empirical evaluations that clearly demonstrate their claims of scalability. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
  • semantic web search engines,
  • benchmark evaluations of the state-of-the-art systems
  • systems that process data streams from multiple sensors
  • parallel and distributed reasoning,
The Journal of Web Semantics is published by Elsevier since 2003. It is an interdisciplinary journal based on research and applications of various subject areas that contribute to the development of a knowledge intensive and intelligent service Web. These areas include: knowledge technologies, ontology, agents, databases and the semantic grid, obviously disciplines like information retrieval, language technology, human computer interaction and knowledge discovery are of major relevance as well. All aspects of the Semantic Web development are covered. The Journal of Web Semantics offers to its authors and readers:
  • Professional support with publishing by Elsevier staff
  • Indexed by Thomson Reuters web of science
  • Impact factor 3.41: the third highest out of 92 titles in Thomson Reuters' category "Computer Science, Information Systems"
Submissions should describe original contributions and should not have been published or submitted elsewhere. Submissions based on conference papers should be extended and include a reference to the corresponding proceedings.
Manuscripts should be prepared for publication in accordance with instructions given in the JWS Guide for Authors. The submission and review process will be carried out using Elsevier Editorial System (http://ees.elsevier.com/jws/). Final decisions of accepted papers will be approved by an editor in chief.
The schedule for the special issue is the following:
  • Submissions Due: July 1st 2010 October 1, 2010
  • Notification: December 1st 2010 January 15, 2011
  • Revised Papers: February 1st 2011 February 15, 2011
  • Final Decision: April 1st 2011
  • Camera Ready Version: May 1st 2011
For any further questions regarding the special issue (appropriateness of your contribution, editorial issues, etc.), please feel free to contact the guest editors:
Prof. Dr. Heiner Stuckenschmidt (managing guest editor)
Computer Science Institute
University of Mannheim
B6, 26 68159 Mannheim
Germany
Phone.: +49 621 181 2530
Fax: +49 621 181 2682
Email: heiner@informatik.uni-mannheim.de

Jeff Heflin
Associate Professor
Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering
Lehigh University, 19 Memorial Drive West
Bethlehem, PA 18015
Phone: +1 610 758-6533
Fax: +1 610 758-4096
E-Mail: heflin@cse.lehigh.edu

CfP: Special Issue on Semantic Web Dynamics

CALL FOR PAPERS Special Issue on Semantic Web Dynamics

Description

Recent years have witnessed the arrival of more and more semantically annotated data and related ontologies in the Semantic Web. For example, the linked data initiative has been very successful in making datasets available online, with a total of about 5 billion triples all together so far. While existing semantic tools and reasoning engines are year after year getting better in dealing with time invariant domain of ontological knowledge, supporting rapidly changing information has not yet attracted sufficient attention.
There are more and more heterogeneous and/or dynamic data types being created and which integration could lead to interesting applications and models (e.g. sensor data streams, geospatial information and imagery, financial transactions, news feeds, 3D models, engineering data, information for policy intelligence etc.). Current Stream Database Management Systems provide on the fly analysis of data streams, but they suffer several limitations: they cannot handle heterogeneous data streams originating from a variety of already deployed sensors; they cannot combine data streams with slowly evolving knowledge at query time; and they cannot perform reasoning tasks. And in the area of reasoning, while the problem of classical, time invariant domain of ontological knowledge has been extensively studied, the task of reasoning with rapidly changing information has been mostly neglected and constitutes a new challenge.
Furthermore, ontologies, just like any structure holding knowledge and information, need to be updated too: changes could be initiated because of a change in the world being modelled; or by a change in the users’ needs which would require a different conceptualization; or by the acquisition of knowledge previously unknown, unclassified or otherwise unavailable; or by the noticing of a design flaw in the original conceptualization. In all these cases, the representation of knowledge in the ontology should be modified so as to form a more accurate or adequate conceptualization of the domain.
This general issue of Semantic Web Dynamics includes difficulties from both practical and theoretical points of view, raising a variety of research questions and development challenges, such as how to support the ontology and data publishers in maintaining up-to-date, adequate representations; how to detect the need for evolution and changes; how to facilitate the integration of new, dynamic sources in existing datasets and ontologies; how to validate and evaluate the impact of the changes on semantic information; how to handle changes triggered from multiple sources and collaborative updates; and how to keep track of (possibly concurrent) versions of and ensure the delivery of up-to-date and valid knowledge.

Topics of Interest

For this special issue, we seek articles describing foundational and theoretical work as well as technological solutions to these challenges. More specifically, we expect submission on (but not restricted to) the following topics:
  • Foundational and formal aspects of Semantic Web dynamics
  • Language extensions for Semantic Web dynamics
  • Reasoning with dynamic data and ontologies
  • Engineering dynamic data and ontologies
  • Requirements and practical issues for Semantic Web dynamics
  • Applications of dynamic data and ontologies
  • Theory for stream reasoning
  • Logic language for stream reasoning
  • Scalability issues in stream reasoning
  • Ontologies for dynamic environments
  • Dynamic knowledge building, and (re-)use
  • Ontology evolution and versioning
  • Language extensions for evolution
  • Belief revision for ontologies
  • Change propagation in ontologies dynamic datasets and ontologies
  • Inconsistency in evolving semantic information
  • Incremental reasoning
  • Case studies and applications of ontology and knowledge evolution
  • Tools to support dynamic data and ontologies

Important Dates

  • 31 May 2010: Submission deadline
  • 14 June 2010: Submission deadline
  • 31 August 2010: First-round reviews complete
  • 31 October 2010: Revised papers submitted
  • 23 December 2010: Final acceptance decisions

Method of Submission

Submission should be realized through Elsevier's Electronic Submission system (EES), selecting "Special Issue: Semantic Web Dynamics" as article type. A guide for authors is available concerning the use of this system here.

Guest Editors/Contacts

  • Grigoris Antoniou - FORTH, Greece (antoniou@ics.forth.gr)
  • Mathieu d’Aquin - The Open University, United Kingdom (m.daquin@open.ac.uk)
  • Jeff Z. Pan - University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom (jeff.z.pan@abdn.ac.uk)