[DL] ISWC2003 Announcement

[Mike Dean]

2nd International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2003)

Sanibel Island, Florida, USA
20-23 October 2003

http://iswc2003.semanticweb.org

Contents:

  Call for Papers
  Call for Posters
  Call for Workshop Proposals
  Call for Tutorial Proposals
  Industrial Track Call
  Call for Demos
  Call for Sponsors
  Organizing Committee

This information is also available from the conference home
page http://iswc2003.semanticweb.org.


------------------------------------------------------------

CALL FOR PAPERS


The vision of the Semantic Web is to make web data machine
processable, and rests on the premise that to do so we need
to accommodate, somehow, the semantics of these data.  Many
technologies and methodologies are being developed within
Artificial Intelligence, Databases, Software Engineering and
Information Systems that can contribute towards the
realization of this vision.  Among those are languages for
semantic annotation of Web documents, ontologies,
technologies and methodologies for building multi-agent
systems, semantic interoperation of programs that have been
developed totally independently, technologies and
methodologies for describing, searching and composing Web
Services, and more.

Following the success of the First International Semantic
Web Conference in Sardinia, Italy in 2002, the 2nd
International Semantic Web Conference is announced for
2003.  The conference will be co-located with the K-CAP
(Knowledge Capture) conference.  Joint sessions of the two
conferences will be planned so that participants can share
papers and invited speakers of common interest.


Submissions
 
ISWC2003 welcomes the submission of original research papers
dealing with all aspects of the Semantic Web, particularly
those relating to the subject areas indicated by the topics
below.  We encourage theoretical, methodological, empirical
and applications papers.  In addition to those, we encourage
the submission of papers relating to industrial efforts and
experiences with Semantic Web projects.  These papers will be
presented in the Industrial Track and will be submitted to
the Industrial Track Chair.

The conference also encourages the submission of proposals
for workshops and tutorials, submission of posters as well
as system demonstrations.  Please see the Web site
http://iswc2003.semanticweb.org.


Conference Topics Of Interest and Area Keywords

Suggested topics include:

* Languages, Tools and Methodologies for Semantic Annotations of Web Data

* Ontologies (creation, merging, linking and reconciliation)

* Large Scale Knowledge Management

* Data Semantics

* Database Technologies for the Semantic Web

* Knowledge Portals

* Tools and Methodologies for Multi-Agent Software Systems 

* Semantic Brokering

* Semantic Interoperability

* Semantic Web Mining

* Semantic Web Services (service description, discovery, invocation, composition)

* Semantic Web Inference Schemes

* Semantic Web Trust, Privacy, Security and Intellectual Property Rights

* Semantic Web for e-Business  and e-Learning

* Searching and Querying

* User Interfaces

* Visualization and modelling


Senior Program Committee

Paolo Atzeni (Universita di Roma, Tre, Italy)

Sonia Bergamaschi (University of Modena, Italy)

Stefano Ceri (Politecnico di Milano, Italy)

Oren Etzioni (University of Washington, USA)

Alon Halevy (University of Washington, USA)

Frank van Harmelen (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

Jerry Hobbs (USC ISI, USA)

Massahiro Hori (IBM, Japan)

Ian Horrocks (University of Manchester, UK)

Vipul Kashyap (National Library of Medicine, USA)

Roger King (University of Colorado, USA)

Ora Lassila (Nokia, USA)

David Martin (SRI, USA)

Brian McBride (Hewlett-Packard, UK)

Robert Meersman (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)

Riichiro Mizogouchi (Osaka University, Japan)

Peter Patel-Schneider (Lucent, USA)

Zbigniew Rus (University of North Carolina, USA)

Amit Sheth (University of Georgia, USA)

Rudi Studer (University of Karlsruhe, Germany)

Gerhard Weikum (University of Saarland, Germany)


Important Dates

April 15, 2003  Paper submission
June 15, 2003   Acceptance Notification
July 15, 2003   Camera-Ready Papers due

Please note that the deadline for paper submission is
strict: no extensions will be allowed.


Submission Details
 
* Paper submission and reviewing for ISWC2003 will be electronic, via the
  conference WWW site:

     http://iswc2003.semanticweb.org

* The only formats allowed for submission are PostScript or
  PDF (Adobe's Portable Document Format).  These are widely
  supported and well-known standards: papers will not be
  accepted in any other format (e.g., MS Word) because of
  compatibility problems between software versions,
  machines, and nationalities.  See the conference WWW site
  for information about how to convert other formats (e.g.,
  MS Word) to PDF/PostScript.

* Note that the electronic submission site is likely to be
  very busy around the paper submission deadline.  You are
  strongly urged to submit your abstract and your paper as
  far in advance of the deadline as possible.

* Submitted papers must be formatted in the style of the
  Springer publications format for Lecture Notes in Computer
  Science.

* Papers must be no longer than 8 pages, including figures
  and references, when formatted using the style files
  provided.  Overlength papers will be rejected.

* ISWC2003 will not accept any paper which, at the time of
  submission, is under review for or has already been
  published or accepted for publication in a journal or
  another conference.

* PLEASE monitor http://iswc2003.semanticweb.org for further
  submission details or changes.


About the Conference Venue

The conference will be held at the Sundial Resort on Sanibel
Island:  http://www.sundialresort.com/


------------------------------------------------------------

CALL FOR POSTERS


The Poster Session at ISWC2003 is an opportunity to discuss
late-breaking results, ongoing research projects, and
innovative work-in-progress which may not yet be ready for a
full paper.  Technical posters, reports on Semantic Web
software systems, completed work, or work in progress are
all welcome.

Summaries or extended abstracts MUST clearly demonstrate a
relevance to the Semantic Web.  Submissions will be
evaluated for acceptability by the Poster Committee.
Decisions about acceptance will be based on relevance to the
Semantic Web, originality, significance, and clarity.

High quality papers not accepted for publication as conference
papers may be considered for inclusion as posters with the
permission of the authors.  In this event, the author(s) will
need to submit a 2-page camera-ready version for the poster
collection.  Papers appearing in the main conference or as
posters may also be submitted to specialized ISWC workshops.

Accepted posters will be displayed at the conference.
Details about poster size, display materials, session, etc.,
will be made available later.

Extended abstracts/summaries for accepted posters will be
distributed to conference attendees and will also be made
available on the Web.  At least one author must register for
the conference and attend the poster session.


Submissions

Submissions must consist of a camera-ready extended abstract
or summary of the work to be described in the poster, not to
exceed two (2) pages in IJCAI two-column format.  Further
details about format for poster submissions will be made
available at the conference Web site.

The primary means of submission will be electronic.
Submissions should be in PDF or Postscript format.
Abstracts and summaries must be submitted via the Poster
Submissions page at the ISWC2003 Web site
(http://iswc2003.semanticweb.org).  Contact Raphael
Malyankar (iswc-posters at asu.edu) if you cannot use this
page, have questions, or experience problems with your
submission.

All submissions must be received by July 13, 2003.  Early
submission is encouraged.  Decisions about acceptance or
rejection will be made on an ongoing basis, and early
submissions are expected to receive early notifications.
Submissions which are late, too long, or require substantial
revision, will not be considered.  Submissions must be in
camera-ready format; gven the tight publication schedule,
revisions after August 31, 2003 will not be feasible.


Important Dates

July 13, 2003     Abstract/summary submission cutoff date
August 31, 2003   Notifications will be sent by this date 


------------------------------------------------------------

CALL FOR WORKSHOP PROPOSALS


The ISWC2003 Organizing Committee invites proposals for the
Workshop Program of ISWC2003, the Second International
Semantic Web Conference, to be held October 20-23, 2003, at
Sanibel Island, Florida, USA.  Workshops will be held on
Monday, October 20, immediately preceding the main ISWC2003
conference.

The purpose of these workshops is to provide an informal
setting for workshop participants to discuss technical
issues, exchange research ideas, and to develop community in
the quickly emerging field of the Semantic Web.  These
workshops may be driven by fundamental academic interests,
or by more applied industrial or commercial interests.  We
encourage a diversity of workshops relating to the Semantic
Web, including those that

* focus on fundamental research issues,

* bring together inter-disciplinary approaches to Semantic Web issues,

* support the interaction of research and industry for the
  deployment of Semantic Web applications.

The format of the workshop will be determined by the
organizers.  Workshops can vary in length from a half day to
a full day.  Having more than one co-organizer for a
workshop is strongly advised.  Workshop attendees must pay
the ISWC2003 workshop registration fee.
   

Important Dates

December 16, 2002    Workshop proposals due 
January 20, 2003     Notification of proposal acceptance 
May 12, 2003         Deadline for receipt of URL for workshop web page 
October 20, 2003     Workshop program 
October 21-23, 2003  ISWC2003 Technical Program 


Requirements for Workshop Proposal Submission 

Proposals for workshops should be no more than 3 pages in
length, preferably 1-2 pages.  They should contain the
following information:

* Title and brief technical description of the workshop,
  specifying the goals and the technical issues that will be
  its focus.

* A brief description of why and to whom the workshop is of
  interest.

* A list of related workshops or similar events held in the
  last 3 years, or to be held in 2003.

* The names and contact information (web page, email
  address) of the proposed organizing committee.  This
  committee should consist of two or three people
  knowledgeable about the technical issues to be addressed,
  preferably not coming from the same institution.

* A description of the qualifications of the proposed
  organizing committee with respect to organizing this
  workshop (e.g., papers published in the proposed topic
  area, previous workshop organization, other relevant
  information).

Each workshop organizing committee will be responsible for
the following:

* Producing a web page and a "Call for Papers/Participation"
  for their workshop.  Submit the URL for your workshop to
  the workshop chair by May 12, 2003.  The call must make it
  clear that the workshop is open to all members of the ISWC
  community.  It should also mention that at least one author
  of each accepted submission must attend the workshop and
  that all workshop participants must pay the ISWC2003
  workshop registration fee, as well as the conference
  fee.  Finally, it should also clearly describe the process
  by which the Organizing Committee will select the
  participants.

* Providing a brief description of the workshop for the
  conference web page and program.

* Selecting the participants and the format of the workshop.

* All advertising of the workshop beyond web page advertising. 

* Production of any working notes for the workshop.

The ISWC2003 Organizing Committee will be responsible for
the following:

* Providing publicity for the workshop series as a whole on
  the conference's web page.  The ISWC2003 page will provide
  a link to a workshop's local page.

* Providing logistics support and a meeting place for the workshop. 

* In conjunction with the organizers, determining the
  workshop date and time.


Submitting a Proposal 

Proposals may be submitted in any one of the following
formats:  ASCII text, PostScript, PDF, LaTeX, or Microsoft
Word.  Please send your proposals and any inquiries by
electronic mail to: iswc2003workhops at ics.forth.gr

The ISWC2003 Workshop Co-chairs are Sheila McIlraith
(Knowledge Systems Lab, Stanford University) and Dimitris
Plexousakis (University of Crete and ICS-FORTH, Greece).

 
------------------------------------------------------------

CALL FOR TUTORIAL PROPOSALS


The ISWC2003 Organizing Committee invites proposals for the
Tutorial Program of ISCW2003, the Second International
Semantic Web Conference, to be held October 20-23, 2003 at
Sanibel Island, Florida,  USA. Tutorials will be held on
Monday, October 20, immediately preceding the main ISWC2003
conference.  We invite proposals for four or eight hour
tutorials on topics related to the main topics of the
conference.


Submission details 

Proposals for tutorials should be no more than 5
pages. Proposals should contain:

* A brief description of the tutorial, including: goals,
  detailed outline, justification of why the tutorial is
  important, background knowledge required and potential
  attendees.

* For eight hour tutorial, kind of hands-on activities to be
  carried by the attendees, software needed for running the
  hands-on activities, procedure to allow the participants
  to install the software on their computers as well as all
  the technical requirements needed for running it.  The
  software needed for running the hands-on activities will
  be provided by the Tutorial speakers.

* Information about the tutorial speakers including name,
  address, affiliation, email, phone and fax.

* A Short CV of the presenter(s), including background in
  the tutorial area, previous experiences held, references
  to published work in the area and evidence of teaching
  experience.  Having more than one tutorial speaker is
  strongly advised.  In that case, who will be the contact
  person.

* A list of the support material to be given to tutorial
  attendees.  Together with the power point slides used for
  the presentation, having a technical paper describing the
  content of the tutorial is strongly advised.

* A list of audio-visual or technical requirements and any
  special room requirements.

Tutorial organizers will be responsible for the following: 

* Submitting the URL for your Tutorial to the tutorial chair by
  May 12, 2003.  The call must make it clear that the
  Tutorial is open to all members of the ISWC community.  It
  should also mention that all tutorial participants must
  pay the ISWC2003 tutorial registration fee, as well as the
  conference fee.

* Providing a brief description of the tutorial for the
  conference web page.

* Production of all the technical material before September
  5 to be used for teaching the tutorial:  tutorial notes,
  technical paper and CD for allowing the participants to
  install the software needed on their computers.  Each
  tutorial organizer will provide to the tutorial attendees
  a CD with all the software required for doing the hands-on
  activities.

* Tutorial proposals should be submitted in PDF, by February
  28th, 2003, to the ISWC2003 tutorial chair:

    Asuncisn Gomez-Perez
    Facultad de Informatica
    Universidad Politecnica de Madrid
    Campus de Montegancedo sn
    28660 Boadilla del Monte, Madrid, Spain
    asun at fi.upm.es

The ISWC2003 Organizing Committee will be responsible for
the following:

* Providing publicity for the tutorial as a whole on the
  conference's web page.  The ISWC2003 page will provide a
  link to a tutorial's local page.

* Providing logistics support and a meeting place for the
  tutorial.

* In conjunction with the organizers, determining the
  tutorial date and time.


Important Dates

February 28, 2003    Tutorial proposals due
March 24, 2003       Notification of proposal acceptance
May 12, 2003         Deadline for receipt of URL for tutorial web page
September 3, 2003.   Deadline for sending the tutorial chair the tutorial notes and the technical paper.
October 20, 2003     Tutorial day
October 21-23, 2003  ISWC2003 Technical Program


------------------------------------------------------------

INDUSTRIAL TRACK CALL


The industrial track of the conference encourages
submissions covering innovative commercial implementations
of semantic web technology, novel applications of semantic
web technology, and experience in applying research advances
to practical situations.  Such papers should describe
innovative implementations, new approaches to fundamental
challenges (such as large scale ontologies or semantic
complexity), or other major technical improvements to the
state-of-the-practice.  Industrial / application / experience
submissions may be either full papers whose technical
density is comparable to research submissions or extended
abstracts.

Discouraged are papers or abstracts that are marketing
oriented or are pure product descriptions or specifications.

The goal of the industrial track is to demonstrate the
application of research results in software products as well
as state real world requirements from practical applications
that might encourage further research into specific domains
of semantic web technology.


------------------------------------------------------------

CALL FOR DEMOS


The ISWC 2003 Program Committee invites proposals for the
Demonstrations Program.  This program is intended to
showcase state-of-the-art Semantic Web implementations.
Submissions will be evaluated on the basis of their
innovation, relevance, scientific contribution,
presentation, and user friendliness, as well as potential
logistical constraints.  This program is primarily to
encourage the early exhibition of research prototypes, but
interesting mature systems are also eligible (commercial
sales and marketing activities are not appropriate in the
Demonstration program).


Areas of Interest

We would like to encourage the submission of proposals for
demonstrations of software related to any areas of the
Semantic Web. Areas of interest include, but are not limited
to:

- User tools
  - Annotation tools
  - Novel query interfaces
  - Ontology development environments
  - Ontology libraries
  - Tools for merging or integrating ontologies
- Reusable components
  - Parsers (RDF, DAML+OIL, OWL, etc.)
  - Repositories and inference systems
- Applications
  - Agent systems embedded in the Semantic Web
  - Systems that identify and compose web services
  - Knowledge portals


Format for Submission

Demo proposals consist of the following parts, which should
all be sent to the Demo Chair.

* An abstract of the technical content to be demonstrated,
  not to exceed two pages, including title, authors, full
  contact information, references and acknowledgments.

* A detailed description of hardware and software
  requirements expected to be provided by the local
  organizer.  Demonstrators are encouraged to be flexible in
  their requirements (possibly with different demos for
  different logistical situations).  Please state what you can
  bring yourself and what you absolutely must have
  provided.  We will do our best to provide equipment and
  resources but nothing can be guaranteed at this point beyond
  space and power.  Please contact the demo chair at one of
  the addresses below for any specific questions.

*  A "Script Outline" of the demo presentation, including
   accompanying narrative, and either a web address for
   accessing the demo or visual aids (e.g., screen-shots,
   snapshots, or sketches). No more than 6 pages, total.


Submissions Procedure

Both electronic and hardcopy submissions are welcome.
Electronic submissions should be plain text, HTML, or PDF
format.  Please submit proposals and any inquiries to the
ISWC 2003 Demo Chair:

  Jeff Heflin
  Computer Science and Engineering
  Lehigh University
  19 Memorial Drive West
  Bethlehem, PA 18015 USA
  heflin at cse.lehigh.edu
  phone: (610) 758-6533
  fax:   (610) 758-4096


Important Dates

July 13, 2003    Demo proposal submission cutoff date
August 31, 2003  Notifications will be sent by this date 


------------------------------------------------------------

CALL FOR SPONSORS


ISWC2003 offers you the opportunity to be a corporate
sponsor of the International Semantic Web Conference
(ISWC2003), which will be held in Sanibel Island, Florida,
USA, 20-23 October 2003 (See
http://iswc2003.semanticweb.org/ for conference details).
This meeting builds on the success of the Semantic Web
Working Symposium (SWWS) held at Stanford University during
the summer of 2001 and the 1st International Semantic Web
Conference (ISWC2002) held in Sardinia, Italy during the
summer of 2002.  These conferences were very successful and
each attracted over 200 attendees from university,
government, and industry.  The meeting's sponsors include
innovative companies both small and large and several US and
EC government organizations.
 
The ISWC conference is a major meeting for bringing
researchers and practitioners together, and for helping both
to describe critical paths for web development and to help
in transferring this emerging technology to industrial use.
The Semantic Web area is an important and dynamic sub-field
of web R&D, which attracts a growing industrial community as
well as from the World Wide Web consortium and significant
interest and funding from both the US and EU governments.
This increasing interest presents an opportunity for your
organization to be associated with this important trend in
the web of the future.

The Semantic Web is already producing a new Web that
provides a machine understandable meaning to Web pages.  By
accessing directly the meaning of pages, computers can
harvest information, saving us the time and effort to read
pages and pages to find the information we seek.  To this
extent the Semantic Web is becoming a fertile environment
for Data Mining and Information Retrieval across the web and
across heterogeneous Databases.  Furthermore, the growing
community of Web Services is already taking advantage of the
emergence of the Semantic Web to reduce the automatic
interoperability barrier.

To highlight the growing range of industrial applications of
the Semantic Web, in ISWC2003 we will organize an industrial
track that will provide an opportunity to showcase new
products and the contribution from industry side.  The
exhibition will be held during the conference, and it will
offer an excellent chance you should not miss to brand your
company with your products and services.

We have created several sponsorship levels to make it easier
for small companies to have an opportunity to get involved
or for larger companies to make their presence felt.  The
sponsorship levels and benefits are:

* Silver (1000$US)

  - your logo on our web site 

  - your logo in our published proceedings, 

  - acknowledgement of your support in our published proceedings

  - pay extra 500$US more, you will have one free exhibition

* Gold (2500$US)

  - silver 

  - one free registration

  - the distribution to all participants of short materials
    (brochure or advertisement) that you provide

  - pay extra 500$US more, you will have one free exhibition

* Platinum (5000$US): 

  - gold 

  - an additional (2nd) registration

  - one free exhibition during the conference

Notes:  If you are only interested in the exhibition, you
need to pay 1000$US for it.

In addition, we have opportunities for higher sponsorship
levels including the ability to sponsor conference or
affiliated events.

Please contact one of the sponsorship chairs below for more
information.  Thank you for your support!

* Ying Ding: Division of Mathematics & Computer Science,
  Free University, Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1081a, 1081 HV
  Amsterdam, The Netherlands (Email: ying at cs.vu.nl, Tel: +
  31 20 44 47739 (0), +31 652098022 (mobile), Fax: + 31 84
  86 63569)

* Massimo Paolucci: The Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon
  University, 5000 Forbes ave, Pittsburgh PA, 15213-3891,
  USA (Email: paolucci at cs.cmu.edu, Tel +1 (412) 268-7019,
  Fax +1 (412) 268-5569)


------------------------------------------------------------

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE


General Chair:  Dieter Fensel (Free University of Amsterdam,
The Netherlands)

Program Chair:  Katia Sycara (Carnegie Mellon University, USA)

Program Co-Chair:  John Mylopoulos (University of Toronto, Canada)

Tutorial Chair:  Asun Gomez-Perez (Polytechnic University of Madrid, Spain)

Workshops Chairs:  Sheila McIlraith (Stanford University,
USA) and Dimitris Plexousakis (University of Crete, Greece)

Industrial Track Chair:  Christoph Bussler (Oracle, USA)

Poster Chair:  Raphael Malyankar (Arizona State University, USA)

Finance Chair:  Jerome Euzenat (INRIA, Rhone-Alpes, France)

Publicity Chair:  Mike Dean (BBN, USA)

Local Arrangements Chair:  Jeff Bradshaw (University of West
Florida, USA)

Sponsor Chairs:  Ying Ding (Free University of Amsterdam, The
Netherlands) and Massimo Paolucci (Carnegie Mellon
University, USA)

Demonstration Chair:  Jeff Heflin (Lehigh University, USA)

Registration Chair:  Atanas Kiryakov (Sirma AI, Ltd, Bulgaria)