[DL] Call-for-paper: ISWC2011 Joint Workshop on Knowledge Evolution and Ontology Dynamics

[Zhisheng Huang]

EvoDyn:  ISWC2011 Joint Workshop on Knowledge Evolution and Ontology 
Dynamics
      (http://www.ontologydynamics.org/od/index.php/evodyn2011/)


DESCRIPTION

EvoDyn builds on the success of the previous editions of the Ontology 
Dynamics workshop formerly known as IWOD (organised as a part of the 
ESWC'07, ISWC'08, ISWC'09 and ISWC'10 conferences). EvoDyn continues in 
the tradition of IWOD in being the core annual event to discuss advances 
in the broad area of ontology dynamics, and to track recent work 
directly or indirectly related to the problem of evolving ontologies. 
This year, however, the scope of the workshop is broadened by a special 
focus on the knowledge evolution. As ontologies are formal 
representations of knowledge, the study of their dynamics is an inherent 
part of investigating the knowledge evolution phenomena, yet it is only 
one of many relevant aspects this workshop aims to cover in an integral 
manner.

In particular, the workshop focuses on analysis of trends and change in 
formal descriptions (i.e., ontologies), but also in associated raw 
sources of knowledge (scientific publications, unstructured or 
semi-structured web content, traditional data stores, e-mail or on-line 
discussion threads, etc.). We are especially interested in research 
targeted on various states of knowledge evolution, such as (a) 
conflicts, (b) consolidation, (c) discovery, (d) paradigm shifts, and 
(e) breakthroughs. One crucial objective of better understanding these 
different states may be to study directly the underlying causes and 
dynamics needed to generate discoveries and breakthroughs. We will only 
be able to facilitate and possibly also generate such desirable 
situations if we can understand the process of how knowledge evolves. 
The process of how knowledge in a field grows and changes, crystallizes, 
and fractures are all areas of interest of this workshop. The same holds 
for related novel applied technologies, such as:
   * Tools for tracking the progress of knowledge from latent ideas, 
through hypotheses to well-supported facts and/or claims;

   * Methods for identifying what are the crucial fulcrum-points where a 
particular field may blossom or fail;
   * Methodologies and supporting tools for identification and 
reinforcement of emerging promising trends in various academic and/or 
industrial domains;
   * Platforms facilitating interconnection and cross-fertilization of 
related endeavors in isolated disciplines.

Further information and relevant updates can be found at the workshop 
web page: http://www.ontologydynamics.org/od/index.php/evodyn2011/

GOALS

We would like to trigger a comprehensive and coherent approach to 
studying (and ultimately facilitating) the process of knowledge 
evolution by bringing together researchers and practitioners from the 
following fields:
   * Data mining and knowledge discovery in dynamic resources.
   * Ontology dynamics and versioning.
   * Trend analysis (in multiple applications, including internet 
search, corpus evaluation, etc.).
   * Natural Language Processing (evolution of terminology, language 
use, semantics).
   * Knowledge Representation (temporal ontologies, temporal logics, 
belief revision, etc.)
   * Discourse Analysis and Philosophy of Science (the definition and 
understanding of what particular phases of the knowledge evolution are, 
and how can we delimit, identify or even trigger them)
   * Relevant application domains (such as Biomedical informatics, 
Neuroinformatics, and Biomedicine in general, but also domains like 
Internet Search, Business Analytics, Legal Studies or Digital Humanities)

We think that only after cross-fertilization of these different 
perspectives we can achieve a truly representative and coordinated 
research agenda covering all different facets of the knowledge evolution 
within specific, well-defined concrete examples from a wide variety of 
fields. The ultimate importance of such an effort lies, of course, in 
better understanding of what knowledge evolution actually is and how we 
can make the whole process more efficient in various application areas. 
Given both the potential impact of scientific discovery and the 
difficulties inherent in understanding how to create it, we feel that 
focusing on the topic of knowledge evolution is much desired and could 
conceivably encourage identification and tackling of grand challenges in 
the area of scientific discovery.

Ideally, we would like to see the practitioners and researchers actively 
network and collaborate in order to define and understand the most 
relevant and important lines of research pertinent to the underlying 
goal of understanding and enabling the processes of discovery, paradigm 
shift and breakthrough. This is going to be achieved by active 
engagement of the workshop organisers, authors and participants beyond 
mere paper presentation and discussion sessions. Before the workshop 
itself, we will identify a set of general grand challenges, partly based 
on the submissions received. These will serve as a guideline for an 
interactive discussion session that will be a part of the workshop 
agenda. The interactive session is supposed to wrap up the workshop with 
a concrete list of research questions and use cases most pertinent to 
knowledge evolution and ontology dynamics, accompanied with a tentative 
plan of related collaborative research and application development efforts.

TOPICS

The topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following 
categories and their sub-domains.

Foundations of Knowledge Evolution:
   * Philosophical and epistemological aspects of evolving knowledge
   * Evolving knowledge as a complex system
   * Models and ontologies for knowledge evolution
   * Models and ontologies for change management
   * Requirements for knowledge and ontology evolution
   * Case studies in knowledge and ontology evolution
Temporal Aspects of Knowledge Capture:
   * Dynamic ontology learning
   * Ontology-based data mining
   * Ontology evolution and versioning
   * Hypothesis and claim extraction
   * Information retrieval and extraction for detecting paradigm shifts
Representation of and Reasoning with Evolving Knowledge:
   * Time representation
   * Formal aspects of ontology dynamics
   * Belief revision for ontologies
   * Ontology language extensions
   * Semantic evolution and discovery
   * Temporal reasoning
   * Provenance
   * Reasoning for trend analysis
   * Reasoning for knowledge shift detection
Knowledge Integration and Analysis Over Time:
   * Time-aware ontology alignment
   * Time-aware data integration
   * Change propagation in dynamic ontologies
   * Similarity metrics for evolving knowledge
   * Detecting, managing and reconciling conflicting knowledge
Visualization and Presentation of Evolving Knowledge:
   * Querying for evolving knowledge
   * Browsing evolving knowledge
   * Visualising trends, changes and paradigm shifts
   * Visual summarization of knowledge sub-domains
   * User interfaces for evolving knowledge presentation
Possible Application Domains:
   * Genetics / Molecular Biology
   * Clinical Science
   * Biomedical informatics
   * Neuroscience / Neuroinformatics
   * Business analytics
   * Legal studies
   * Discourse analysis
   * Digital humanities
We especially encourage submissions that integrally cover multiple 
above-mentioned topics.

SUBMISSIONS

Only electronic submissions will be considered. All submissions should 
be submitted in PDF format, to 
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=evodyn11. Submissions should 
not exceed 14 pages and should be formatted according to the LNCS 
Springer format 
(http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0). The 
workshop proceedings will both be uploaded to CEUR (http://ceur-ws.org/) 
and placed on electronic media for distribution at the conference.

DATES

August 15, 2011:     deadline for the submission of papers
September 12, 2011:     notification of acceptance/rejection
September 26, 2011:     deadline for the camera ready paper submissions
October 24, 2011:     EvoDyn-2011 at ISWC'11, the Maritim convention 
center, Bonn,
             Germany (full-day event)

COMMITTEES

Organising Committee

   * Tudor Groza (tudor.groza at uq.edu.au), School of ITEE, The University 
of Queensland
   * Zhisheng Huang (huang at cs.vu.nl), Division of Mathematics and 
Computer Science, Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam
   * Vit Novacek (vit.novacek at deri.org), DERI (Digital Enterprise 
Research Institute), National University of Ireland Galway

Steering Committee

   * Grigoris Antoniou (antoniou at ics.forth.gr), Institute of Computer 
Science, FORTH
   * Mathieu d'Aquin (M.Daquin at open.ac.uk), Knowledge Media Institute, 
The Open University
   * Gully Burns (burns at isi.edu), Information Sciences Institute, 
University of Southern California
   * Giorgos Flouris (fgeo at ics.forth.gr), Institute of Computer Science, 
FORTH
   * Carole Goble, (carole.goble at manchester.ac.uk), Information 
Management Group, Manchester University
   * Jeff Z. Pan (jpan at csd.abdn.ac.uk), Department of Computing Science, 
University of Aberdeen
   * Dimitris Plexousakis (dp at ics.forth.gr), Institute of Computer 
Science, FORTH


Program Committee

   * Grigoris Antoniou, FORTH, Greece
   * Alessandro Artale, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
   * Mathieu d'Aquin, The Open University, UK
   * Paul Buitelaar, DERI Galway, Ireland
   * Vinay Chaudhri, SRI International, US
   * Tim Clark, MGH, Harvard University, US
   * Giuseppe De Giacomo, Sapienza Universita' di Roma, Italy
   * Pascal Hitzler, Wright State University, US
   * Ed Hovy, ISI, University of Southern California, US
   * Zhisheng Huang, Vrije Univesiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
   * Michael Lawley, CSIRO, Australia
   * Thomas Meyer, Meraka Institute, South Africa
   * Enrico Motta, Open University, UK
   * Jeff Z. Pan, University of Aberdeen, UK
   * Dimitris Plexousakis, FORTH, Greece
   * Livia Predoiu, University of Magdeburg, Germany
   * Cartic Ramakrishnan, ISI, University of Southern California, US
   * Dietrich Rebholz-Schuhmann, EBI, UK
   * Andrey Rzhetsky, University of Chicago, US
   * Agnes Sandor, Xerox Research Centre Europe, France
   * Kavitha Srinivas, IBM, US
   * Johanna Voelker, University of Karlsruhe, Germany
   * Kewen Wang, Griffith University, Australia
   * Renata Wassermann, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brasil