[DL] REMINDER CFP for IJHCS: KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION WITH ONTOLOGIES: PRESENT CHALLENGES - FUTURE POSSIBLITIES

[Christopher Brewster]

Apologies for cross-posting.

Call for Papers: Special Issue of the International Journal of
Human-Computer Studies:
"KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION WITH ONTOLOGIES: PRESENT CHALLENGES - FUTURE
POSSIBILITIES"

Guest Editors: Christopher Brewster and Kieron O'Hara
http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/~kiffer/IJHCS.html

Recently, we have seen an explosion of interest in ontologies as artifacts
to represent human knowledge and as critical components in knowledge
management, the Semantic Web, business-to-business applications, and several
other application areas. Various research communities commonly assume that
ontologies are the appropriate modelling structure for representing
knowledge. However, little discussion has occurred regarding the actual
range of knowledge an ontology can successfully represent.

What are the limits of ontology-based representation? Some types of
knowledge are extremely suited to ontological representation, such as
taxonomic information, but clearly this isn't always the case. We can't
always easily represent certain types of knowledge (for example, skills or
distributed knowledge), nor easily transform types of representation into
ontology-appropriate formats (for example, diagrammatic knowledge). And with
the expanded recognition of multiple modalities, does our vision of an
ontology change? Can we speak of multi-media ontologies? This is of even
greater significance as Knowledge Management recognises more exactly the
range of knowledge that is embodied in an organisation.

Most, but not all, definitions of "ontology" insist that an ontology
specifically represents common, shared conceptual structures. Does this
requirement for publicity help guarantee adequacy? And if so, can we talk of
personal ontologies? If ontologies have to represent knowledge relatively
coarsely or approximately, how much is this likely to matter in realistic
contexts? Will scale be a problem?

This special issue seeks outstanding papers on the potential and the limits
of ontologies in the broad range of fields in which they have come to play a
major part. We wish to stimulate discussion so as to facilitate a vision of
where ontologies and knowledge representations are heading. 

Contributions should be original and unpublished studies. We are interested
in both theoretical and practical research concerning the limits and value
of ontologies, including: evaluations of the practical applicability of
ontology based technologies; their limits and potentials; issues and
solutions for problematic real-world applications; tools and techniques for
ontology building and maintenance. Papers concerning the following topics
will be particularly welcome, though any other topic relevant to the theme
of the limits and value of ontological representations would be acceptable:

- Limits of the knowledge representable in ontologies
- New approaches to representing non-standard forms of knowledge using
ontologies
- Alternatives to/Evolution of ontologies
- Formal vs. informal ontologies
- Multimedia ontologies
- Ontologies as corporate memories
- Intellectual property and the commercial significance of ontologies
- Issues in ontology maintenance
- Ontologies for web-scale applications
- The evaluation and trust of ontologies

Important Dates
----------------------------------------

Paper submissions:		1 September, 2005 (negotiable)
Notification of acceptance:	1 November, 2005
Final versions due:		1 February, 2006
Journal publication:		Summer, 2006

Format for submissions
---------------------------------------
Paper should be formatted in accordance with IJHCS guidelines available in
the journal, or at http://authors.elsevier.com/journal/ijhcs and should be
between 6000-8000 words in length. Authors of submitted journals may be
invited to take part in the review process.

Submission should be made in pdf or word format electronically to
C.Brewster at dcs.shef.ac.uk.

*****************************************************
Natural Language Processing Group,
Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield
Tel: +44(0)114-22.21967  Fax: +44 (0)114-22.21810 Regent Court, 211
Portobello Street  
Sheffield   S1 4DP   UNITED KINGDOM
Web: http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/~kiffer/
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A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of an idea within a wall of
words.---  Samuel Butler