[DL] CFP - WORKSHOP ON ONTOLOGIES AND THEIR APPLICATIONS

[fred.freitas at tci.ufal.br]

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			CALL FOR PAPERS
	
	   WORKSHOP ON ONTOLOGIES AND THEIR APPLICATIONS
	   *********************************************

			28 September 2004
		   Sao Luis, Maranhao – Brazil
		     www.ws.onto.ufal.br 

		     held in conjunction with
	XVII Brazilian Symposium on Artificial Intelligence (SBIA)
	Brazilian Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks (SBRN)
	IEEE Machine Learning and Signal Processing (IEEE MLSP)
		       www.sbc.org.br/sbia 


	***  NEW: Authors of best papers will be recommended to submit 
expanded versions for a Special Issue on Ontology Issues and Applications of 
The Journal of Brazilian Computer Society (details below)  ***


In the early 90’s, efforts to promote integration and massive reuse of 
knowledge bases written in different knowledge formalisms and representation 
languages from existing expert systems and agents brought the field of 
ontologies into the research agenda of artificial intelligence again. New 
tools and techniques were generated to tackle these tasks since then, and the 
field matured over the years.

The success of the Semantic Web has led to a wide interest in ontologies and 
their applications from communities outside AI, such as software engineering 
and databases. Their expressivity to define terminologies used in a domain or 
in an application makes them a key technology for information sharing and 
integration in many areas, such as knowledge management and electronic 
commerce. More recently, ontologies have also been discussed as a key 
technology for non-commercial areas such as e-science, e-learning and e-
government.

The wide application of ontologies in these new scenarios comes with new 
challenges with respect to providing supporting technologies that help users 
in different communities to create, maintain and use ontologies at a large 
scale: Engineering methodologies that guide the process of creating of 
ontologies, learning techniques that help generating ontologies from 
repositories of data or text and user-friendly tools for managing and 
maintaining ontologies in a distributed setting. Besides these new challenges, 
the problem of semantic interoperability between different ontologies is still 
largely unsolved. There is a need for new approaches on ontology mapping, 
merging and alignment to leverage this problem.

This workshop addresses the application of ontologies in the different areas 
mentioned above, as well as the theoretical and practical challenges arising 
from these applications. We invite contributions to enhance the state-of-the-
art of creating, managing and using ontologies. 

Topics of Interest:
===================

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Ontology Engineering
- methodologies
- capture and learning
- evaluation
- management

Semantic Interoperability
- composition and modularity
- merging, mapping and alignment
- ontology language interoperability

Ontologies for Information Sharing 
- ontology-based Information integration
- mediators and brokers 
- agents and ontologies

Ontology Applications
- Semantic Web 
- Knowledge Management
- e-commerce, e-government 
- e-learning and e-science
- Information retrieval

Workshop format and attendance:
===============================
 
We intend to avoid the usual conference format, where papers are presented and 
the audience plays a rather passive role. Therefore, the emphasis for this one-
day workshop is on working groups. In order to foster lively and fruitful 
discussion, the workshop sessions will be defined according to groups of 
topics formed from accepted papers. In each group of topics, we plan to 
allocate around one-third of the time for debates.

Attendance will be limited to 45 registrations, formed by the workshop papers 
authors and interested members of the community. Workshop attendees are 
required to register at the main SBIA 2004 conference. For more information, 
please consult the conference website at http://www.sbc.org.br/sbia or 
http://www.inf.ufrgs.br/sbiarn04.

Submission procedure:
=====================

We encourage the submission of high-quality papers based on entirely new work 
or surveys, both meeting the foci of the workshop. Papers must be written in 
English and may have a length of up to 12 pages, including tables, figures, 
and references. Like the main conference, papers must conform to the Springer 
LNCC/LNAI style. It is recommended that authors use Springer-Verlag template 
files (see http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html, section "Proceedings 
and Other Multi-author Volumes" for formatting instructions) to minimize 
possible conflicts of paper length when preparing the camera ready.

Papers should be submitted electronically only, formatted in PDF (preferred) 
or PostScript to the following address: fred.freitas at tci.ufal.br

Submitted papers will be peer-reviewed by at least two program committee 
members and/or additional reviewers/referees. Accepted papers will be 
published in the workshop proceedings in the CDROM with the SBIA technical 
papers. 

At least one of the authors of accepted papers has to register for the 
SBIA ‘2004, otherwise the paper will not be included in the proceedings. 

Any other questions regarding papers submission may be directed to one of the 
organizers.

Special Issue
=============

Authors of best papers will be recommended to submit expanded versions for a 
Special Issue on Ontology Issues and Applications of The Journal of Brazilian 
Computer Society (JBCS). A Web page describing this Special Issue will be 
available soon at the JBCS site (http://www.icmc.usp.br/~jbcs/).

The Journal of the Brazilian Computer Society (JCBS) is the formal quarterly 
publication of the Brazilian Computer Society. Its aim is to publish original 
research papers, serving as a forum for disseminating innovative research in 
all aspects of computer science. The priorities of the journal are quality and 
timeliness. The journal also has an electronic version with free access 
through the Scielo Portal (http://www.scielo.br/revistas/jbcos/iaboutj.htm).

Important dates:
================

May 22 2004       - Deadline for workshop papers
July 22 2004      - Notification of workshop paper acceptance
August 22 2004    - Deadline for workshop camera-ready papers
September 28 2004 - Ontologies & their Applications workshop
 
29 Sep – Oct 1 2004 -  Conference main technical program
 
Program Committee:
==================
 
Troels Andreasen, Roskilde Universitetscenter, Danmark 
Richard Benjamins, iSOCO, Spain
Guilherme Bittencourt, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil
Stefano Borgo, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technology, Italy
Joost Breuker, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
Oscar Corcho, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain
Ronald Cornet, Amsterdam Medical Center, Netherlands
Monica Crubezy, SMI, Stanford University, USA
Henrik Eriksson, Linköping University, Sweden
Fred Freitas, UniSantos and UFAL, Brazil
Vipul Kashyap, National Library of Medicine, USA
Michel Klein, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
Konstantinos Kotis, University of the Aegean, Greece
Eduardo Mean, Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain
Boris Motik, FZI, Karlsruhe, Germany
Natasha Noy, SMI, Stanford University, USA 
Leo Obrst, Mitre Corporation, USA
Dan O’Leary, University of Southern California, USA
Helena Sofia Pinto, INESC-ID Lisboa, Portugal
Jorge Santos, Instituto Politecnico de Porto, Portugal
Stefan Schlobach, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Netherlands
Heiner Stuckenschmidt, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
Steffen Staab, AIFB, Universitaet Karlsruhe, Germany
Gerd Stumme, Universitaet Kaiserslautern, Germany
Sergio Tessaris, Free University of Bozen – Bolzano, Italy
Ingo Timm, Universitaet Bremen, Germany
Andre Valente, Knowledge Systems Venture, USA
Ubbo Visser, Universitaet Bremen, Germany
Raphael Volz, AIFB, Universitaet Karlsruhe, Germany 
Holger Wache, Universitaet Bremen, Germany

Organizing Committee:
=====================
 
Fred Freitas, Universidade Catolica de Santos and Universidade Federal de 
Alagoas, Brazil
    fred.freitas at tci.ufal.br (contact person)
Heiner Stuckenschmidt, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
    heiner at cs.vu.nl 
Raphael Volz, AIFB, University of Karlsruhe, Germany
    volz at aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de 

Context of the workshop and the collocated conferences:
=======================================================
 
SBIA, the Brazilian Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, is a biannual event 
intended to be the main forum of the AI community in Brazil. However since the 
1990's it has also attracted researchers from all over the world, when it 
started to have an international program committee and also keynote invited 
speakers. 

The SBIA 2004 is the 17th event of the series. Since 1995, SBIA has been 
accepting papers written and presented only in English, with proceedings being 
published in the Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence series of Springer-
Verlag (SBIA'95:991, SBIA'96:1159, SBIA'98:1515, SBIA'00:1952, SBIA'02:2507). 

The SBIA 2004 is sponsored by the Brazilian Computer Society (SBC). It will be 
held in Sao Luis, the capital of the state of Maranhao in the northeast of 
Brazil, together with the Brazilian Symposium on Neural Networks, and with the 
IEEE NNSP 2004 (IEEE Neural Network and Signal Processing). The proceedings of 
these latter events will be published by the IEEE Computer Society. For more 
information on these events, please check http://www.sbc.org.br/sbia or 
http://www.inf.ufrgs.br/sbiarn04 .

This way, we expected you and both the AI and ANN communities to join us and 
make this event a very exciting one. Last but not least, besides the dense 
scientific program we are preparing (technical papers, tutorials, invited 
talks, and student sections), there are still the cultural highlights of Sao 
Luis, as well as the natural beauties of one of the most wonderful places in 
Brazil: beaches, sun, and pristine water. 

Hope to meet you there!

About the city:
===============

Sao Luis, capital of the Brazilian state of Maranhao is considered a place 
blessed by nature. Located in a transition area between the Northeast and the 
northern regions of Brazil, the state displays a wide variety of ecosystems. A 
mix of beaches, forests, cerrados, lakes, and rivers are just a few of the 
attractions that differentiate Maranhao from all other Brazilian States. Add 
to that rich and unique history, music, traditions, popular culture, and many 
other facets and it is clear that Maranhao is well worth a visit.

Sao Luis is located on the northeast coast, and is a World Heritage island. It 
is the only capital in Brazil founded by French. However, it has a wonderful 
Portuguese Historical Center, along with an exquisite local sea food, and is 
close to one of the most beautiful desert in the Word: Lençóis Maranhenses, 
where pristine water is laying lazily, distributed on several dunes. 
 
Venue:
======

The conference will take place at Rio Poty Hotel 
(http://www.riopoty.com.br/grupopoty/rpsl.htm, site in Portuguese). More 
information can be found at the main conference web site.