ISWC 2006 - Paper submission deadline

Research/Academic Track

The dream of the Web was to create a human communication and collaboration platform for sharing knowledge and enabling a universal space for information and services. We all are now much more connected, and in turn face new resulting problems: service and information overload caused by insufficient support for information selection, organization and collaboration. The Semantic Web, by providing standards for formulating and distributing metadata and ontologies, enables means for information organization and selective access. However, the Semantic Web requires new infrastructure on all levels - e.g., human-computer interaction, expressive representation and query languages, reasoning engines, data representation and integration, interoperability middleware, and distributed computing.

To foster the exchange of ideas and collaboration, the International Semantic Web Conference brings together researchers in relevant disciplines such as artificial intelligence, databases, distributed computing, web engineering, information systems, and human-computer interaction.

The Fifth International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2006) follows on the success of previous conferences and workshops in Galway, Ireland (2005), Hiroshima, Japan (2004), Sanibel Island, USA (2003), Sardinia, Italy (2002), and Stanford, USA (2001).

The research track of ISWC2006 solicits the submission of original, principled research papers dealing with both analytical and practical aspects of Semantic Web research. Topics include, but are not limited to:

* Applications of Semantic Web technologies with clear lessons learned
* Semantic Web for e-business, e-science, e-government, and e-learning, e-health, digital libraries, tourism, mobile & ubiquitous applications, digital TV
* Languages, tools and methodologies for representing and managing Semantic Web data
* Robust and scalable knowledge management and reasoning on the Web
* Ontology creation, extraction, and evolution
* Ontology mapping, merging, and alignment
* Database technologies for the Semantic Web
* Semantic Web middleware
* Machine learning and human language technologies for the Semantic Web
* Semantic Web services
* Agents on the Web
* Representing and reasoning about trust, privacy, and security
* Semantic web technology for collaboration and cooperation
* Social software
* Semantic multimedia
* Semantics in peer-to-peer systems and grids
* Searching, querying, visualizing and interpreting the Semantic Web
* Evaluation of Semantic Web techniques
* The Semantic Desktop
* User-centered Semantic Web applications and/or interaction design
* Security for the Semantic Web

Detailed formatting instructions and submission procedure will be published on http://iswc2006.semanticweb.org. Papers must be submitted in PDF (Adobe's Portable Document Format) format. Papers will not be accepted in any other format. Formatted papers must be no longer than 10 pages. Papers that exceed this limit will be rejected without review. ISWC2006 will not accept research 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. Authors of accepted papers will be required to provide semantic annotations for the abstract of their submission for the Semantic Web (help will be provided for this task). Details will be provided on the conference Web page at the time of acceptance

Please monitor http://ISWC2006.semanticweb.org for any changes to these instructions.

Important Dates

• May 15, 2006 (Midnight Hawaii time): Research Track paper submissions due
• July 26, 2006:  Research Track paper acceptance notification
• August 25, 2006: Research Track camera-ready papers due
• November 5-9, 2006:  ISWC 2006 Technical Program

Semantic Web In Use Track

Semantic Web research has led to advances in technology which are beginning to be deployed in ways providing real benefits to end users. Companies are accessing and using information more efficiently, government departments are interacting with each other more effectively, and e-scientists are making new discoveries.

The Semantic Web In-Use Track (called Industrial Track in previous ISWC conferences) is a showcase for:
(i) the best applications of semantic web technology and the benefits they bring
(ii) the best tools to ease the deployment of such applications.

The Semantic Web In Use track of ISWC2006 solicits the submission of original, principled papers dealing with applications or tools.

An applications paper should include some or all of:

• A good clear description of an implemented application of semantic web technology. Applications are welcome in any area - industry, government, science or society.
• An assessment of the pros and cons of using semantic web technology to solve this particular problem. Are extensions beyond the existing standards necessary? What advantages does a semantic web approach have over traditional approaches to the application?
• An assessment of the benefits of this application - e.g. a user study, a return-on-investment analysis, demonstration of new results in e-science, or demonstration of user acceptance.
• Evidence and assessment of deployment and use of the application.

A tools paper will include some or all of:

• A good clear description of an implemented toolset to support the deployment of semantic web technology.
• A demonstration that the toolset offers functionality beyond what is previously available.
• An assessment of the benefits of the toolset to the user community - e.g. a usability study.
• Evidence and assessment of the toolset being used in the deployment of semantic web systems

An additional objective of the track is to attract papers that describe concrete problems in industry, government, science and society for which Semantic Web technology would provide a solution. Such papers should analyze the problem and argue for the appropriateness of Semantic Web technology, and provide an outline of possible solutions. A comparison to competing approaches using conventional technology is strongly encouraged.

Detailed formatting instructions and submission procedure will be published on http://iswc2006.semanticweb.org. Papers must be submitted in PDF (Adobe's Portable Document Format) format. Papers will not be accepted in any other format. Formatted papers must be no longer than 10 pages. Papers that exceed this limit will be rejected without review. ISWC2006 will not accept 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. Authors of accepted papers will be required to provide semantic annotations for the abstract of their submission for the Semantic Web (help will be provided for this task). Details will be provided on the conference Web page at the time of acceptance

Please monitor http://ISWC2006.semanticweb.org for any changes to these instructions.

Important Dates

• May 15, 2006 (Midnight Hawaii time): Paper submissions due
• July 26, 2006: Paper acceptance notification
• August 25, 2006: Camera-ready papers due
• November 5–9, 2006: ISWC 2006 Technical Program

Doctoral Consortium

Fifth International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2006)
November 5-9, 2006. Athens, Georgia, USA

This year, the 5th International Semantic Web Conference 2006 will take place in Athens, GA, USA. In addition to its plenary scientific sessions, the conference will include a doctoral consortium. Next to the great opportunity for the scientific exchange and presentation of high quality research in all aspects of Semantic Web, this forum will allow doctoral students to present their work and obtain guidance from mentors as well as to get in contact with other (post)graduate students.

The goal of the doctoral consortium is to create opportunity for doctoral students in early stage of their research to test their research ideas, present their current progress and future plan, and most of all to receive constructive criticism and insights related to their future work and career perspectives. Mentors (peer researchers and experts in the field) will be assigned to each student to provide individual feedback and advice on the paper, the focus of the work and further developments.

All papers submitted to the Doctoral Consortium stream will undergo a thorough reviewing process with a view to providing detailed and constructive feedback. The best submissions will be selected for presentation at the ISWC'06 Doctoral Consortium sessions. Full papers will be published in supplimentary proceedings and extended abstracts of papers will be included in the ISWC'06 proceedings, published by Springer Verlag in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series.

Topics:

The Doctoral Consortium track of ISWC2006 solicits submission of Ph.D. research papers dealing with foundational and core issues, application domains and practical aspects of Semantic Web research. Topics include, but are not limited to:

Languages, Tools & Methodologies:

• Languages, tools and methodologies for representing and managing
Semantic Web data
• Robust and scalable knowledge management and reasoning on the Web
• Ontology creation, extraction, and evolution
• Ontology mapping, merging, and alignment
• Database technologies for the Semantic Web
• Semantic Web middleware
• Machine learning and human language technologies for the Semantic Web
• Semantic Web services
• Agents on the Web
• Representing and reasoning about trust, privacy, and security
• Searching, querying, visualizing and interpreting the Semantic Web

Applications of Semantic Web:

• e-business
• e-science
• e-culture
• e-government
• e-health
• e-learning
• Digital TV
• Tourism
• Digital libraries
• Mobile and ubiquitous Semantic Web applications
• User-centred Semantic Web applications
• User (group) modelling and profiling on the Semantic Web
• Semantic Multimedia
• Semantic Desktop
• Social and Collaborative Communities software
• P2P Semantic Web applications
• Information filtering and retrieval

Evaluation

• Scalability of Semantic Web applications
• Evaluation of Semantic Web techniques
• Evaluation methodologies and deployment experiences
• Empirical studies, user studies
• Ontology evaluation<

Submission Details:

Doctoral Consortium papers should include a clear presentation of the Ph.D. research direction, sound situation of the Ph.D. research in the context of Semantic Web and related fields, a report on the work done so far and a plan of further research. All submissions should be no longer than 5 pages in the same format that is used for the main conference papers.

Important Dates

• May 15, 2006: Paper submissions
• July 26, 2006: Notification of acceptance
• August 25, 2006: Final versions due
• November 5–9, 2006: ISWC 2006 Technical Program

Semantic Web Challenge

Fifth International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2006)
November 5-9, 2006. Athens, Georgia, USA

The Semantic Web Challenge organizers invite proposals for the Semantic Web Challenge of 2006, where participants have the chance to demonstrate the possibilities of current Semantic Web technologies through end-user applications. Since a number of ontology languages, storage facilities, reasoning engines, etc. have become widely available, now is the time to develop integrated, useful and attractive applications that convincingly demonstrate the benefits of semantics for a wider audience. The best applications will receive an award (see below).

Specific Goal for Semantic Web Challenge 2006

Everyone from academia and industry is invited to submit applications that illustrate the possibilities of the Semantic Web. The applications should integrate, combine, and deduce information from various sources to assist users in performing specific tasks. The submissions should at least satisfy the minimal requirements for a Semantic Web Application and preferably exhibit some of the additional desires. Although we expect that most applications will use RDF, RDF Schema, and OWL, this is not an official requirement.

Furthermore, Semantic Web applications should be written in a true Web spirit, open to supporting reuse even in situations that have not been foreseen by the original authors. Thus a specific, additional goal of the Semantic Web Challenge 2006 is motivating participants to provide standard compliant web interfaces to the data and services provided by their applications, e.g. in the form of RSS feeds, SPARQL endpoints, REST or Web Services interfaces.

Minimal Requirements

A Semantic Web Application has to meet the following minimal requirements.
1. First, the information sources used should be geographically distributed, should have diverse ownerships (i.e. there is no control of evolution), should be heterogeneous (syntactically, structurally, and semantically), and should contain real world data, i.e. are more than toy examples.
2. It is required that all applications assume an open world, i.e. assume that the information is never complete.
3. Finally, the applications should use some formal description of the meaning of the data.

Additional Desires

Besides the minimal criteria, a number of desires are formulated. The more desires are met,the higher an application can score. The desires are:
- The application uses data sources for other purposes or in another way than originally intended
- Using the contents of multi-media documents
- Accessibility in multiple languages
- Other applications than pure information retrieval
- Combination of static and dynamic knowledge (e.g. combination of static ontologies and dynamic workflows)
- The results should be as accurate as possible (e.g. use a ranking of results according to validity)
- The application should be scalable (in terms of the amount of data used and in terms of distributed components working together)

How to participate

Visit http://challenge.semanticweb.org/ in order to participate and register for the Semantic Web Challenge by submitting the required information as well as a link to the application on the online registration form. The form will be open until July 1, 2006, 12pm CET. The requirements of this entry are:

1) Abstract: no more than 200 words.

2) Description: The description will show details of the system including why the system is innovative, which features or functions the system provides, what design choices were made and what lessons were learned. Papers should not exceed five pages and must be formatted according to the same guidelines as the papers in the Research Track (see http://iswc2006.semanticweb.org/submissions/res_ac_track.htm)

3) Web access: The application should be accessible via the web. If the application is not publicly accessible, passwords should be provided. We also ask to provide a (short) instruction on how to start and use the application.

Accepted descriptions will be published in the conference proceedings.

Prizes

The prizes for the winners will be available as travel support and book vouchers. The winners will also be asked to give a live demonstration of their application at the ISWC 2006 conference.

Important Dates

• July 14, 2006: Paper submissions due
• August 7, 2006: Notification of acceptance
• August 21, 2006: Camera-ready papers due
• November 5–9, 2006: ISWC 2006 Technical Program

SWC Co-Chairs

Peter Mika
Mike Uschold

SWC Advisory Board

Dean Allemang
JüAngele
Mike Dean
Stefan Decker
Jéme Euzenat
Ian Horrocks
Atanas Kiryakov
Michel Klein
Deborah McGuinness
Rob Shearer
Amit Sheth
York Sure
Ubbo Visser

Contact:

Peter Mika
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Faculty of Sciences - dep. of Computer Science
De Boelelaan 1081a
1081 HV Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Phone: +31 20 598 7753
Department fax: +31 20 598 7653
Email: pmika at cs.vu.nl
Web: http://www.cs.vu.nl/~pmika/