[DL] Call for Papers: FOIS 2014: Keynotes, Workshops, Summer School announced - 2 weeks to deadline

[Oliver Kutz]

CALL FOR PAPERS

8th International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems 
FOIS 2014, September 22-25, 2014, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

DEADLINE: MARCH 3, 2014

http://fois2014.inf.ufes.br/p/home.html
http://www.iaoa.org/fois/
Email: fois2014 at gmail.com

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KEYNOTES, WORKSHOPS, AND SUMMER SCHOOL ANNOUNCED
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FOIS 2014 will feature keynote presentations by 

+ Nicholas Asher (CNRS & Toulouse University, France)
+ Kit Fine (New York University, USA)
+ Nicola Guarino (ISTC-CNR, Italy)

FOIS will moreover feature the following 8 co-located workshops: 

+ Workshop on Ontological Modelling of Socio-Technical Systems
+ 8th International Workshop on Modular Ontologies (WoMO 2014)
+ Workshop on Concept Invention, Generation, Adaptation, and Representation (CIGAR)
+ 1st Joint Workshop on Ontologies in Conceptual Modeling and Information Systems Engineering (Onto.Com/ODISE)
+ Workshop on Logics and Ontologies for Natural Language
+ Workshop on Information Artifact Ontologies
+ 2nd Workshop on Semantic Web and Amazonian Biodiversity Ontology (WAS 2014)
+ Workshop on Formal Ontologies Meet Industry (FOMI 2014)

Workshop details may be found at

http://fois2014.inf.ufes.br/p/workshops.html

The summer school website may be found at

http://iaoa.org/isc2014/


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DEFINITION AND SCOPE
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Ontology, originally a fundamental part of philosophical enquiry, is concerned with the analysis and categorization of what exists. In recent years, however, a complementary focus of ontological inquiry gained significant momentum fueled by the advent of complex information systems which rely on robust and coherent, formal representations of their subject matter. The systematic study of such representations, their axiomatics, their corresponding reasoning techniques and their relations to cognition and reality, are at the center of the modern discipline of formal ontology.

Formal ontology in this modern sense is now a research focus in such diverse domains as conceptual modeling, database design, software engineering, artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, the life sciences, bioinformatics, geographic information science, knowledge engineering, information retrieval, and the Semantic Web. Researchers in all these areas increasingly recognize the need for serious engagement with ontology to provide a foundation for their work, where ontology is understood as a general theory of the types of entities and relations making up their respective domains of enquiry.

The FOIS conference is designed to provide a meeting point for researchers from all disciplines with an interest in formal ontology. The conference encourages submission of high quality articles on both theoretical issues and concrete applications. As in previous years, FOIS 2014 is intended as a nexus of interdisciplinary research and communication.

FOIS is the flagship conference of the International Association for Ontology and its Applications (IAOA, website: http://iaoa.org/), which is a non-profit organization the purpose of which is to promote interdisciplinary research and international collaboration at the intersection of philosophical ontology, linguistics, logic, cognitive science, and computer science, as well as in the applications of ontological analysis to conceptual modeling, knowledge engineering,
knowledge management, information-systems development, library and information science, scientific research, and semantic technologies in general.

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FORMAT
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FOIS is a growing conference, and the 2014 edition will add a number of new facets, including 

+ a formal ontology competition,
+ an open call for workshops, and
+ an early career symposium.

It will moreover be directly preceded by the Second Interdisciplinary Summer School on Ontological Analysis, to be held in Vitoria, Brazil, between September 15-19. See http://iaoa.org/isc2014/


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SCOPE OF FOIS - TOPICS OF INTEREST 
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We seek high-quality papers on a wide range of topics. Concerning scope, an ideal FOIS paper will address both content-related ontological issues and their formal modeling, as well as their impact and relevance for some aspects of information systems.

Areas of particular interest to the conference include the following:

Foundational Issues
* Kinds of entities: particulars/universals, continuants/occurrents, abstracta/concreta, dependent entities/independent entities, natural objects/artifacts
* Formal relations: parthood, identity, connection, dependence, constitution, causality, subsumption, instantiation
* Vagueness and granularity
* Space, time, and change

Methodological issues
* Role of reference ontologies
* Top-level vs. domain-specific ontologies
* Relationship with cognition, language and semantics
* Formal comparison among ontologies
* Ontology integration and alignment 

Domain-specific ontologies
* Ontology of physical reality (matter, space, time, motion, etc.)
* Ontology of biological reality (genes, proteins, cells, organisms, etc.)
* Ontology of mental reality and agency (beliefs, intentions, emotions, percepts, etc.)
* Ontology of artifacts, functions and roles
* Ontology of social reality (institutions, organizations, norms, social relationships, artistic expressions, languages, etc.)

Applications:
* Ontology-driven information systems design
* Ontological foundations for conceptual modeling
* Knowledge management
* Qualitative modeling
* Computational linguistics
* Information retrieval
* Semantic Web, Web services
* Business modeling
* Ontologies for particular scientific disciplines (biology, chemistry, geography, physics, cognitive sciences, linguistics etc.)
* Ontologies for engineering: shape, form and function, artifacts, manufacturing, design, architecture, etc. 
* Ontologies for the humanities: arts, cultural studies, history, law, literature, philosophy, etc.

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IMPORTANT DATES
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Paper Submission Deadline: March 3, 2014
Notification: May 5, 2014
Camera-ready papers: June 30, 2014
Conference Dates: September, 22-25, 2014

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SUBMISSION GUIDELINES 
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Submitted papers must not exceed 14 pages (including the bibliography) and include an abstract of no more than 300 words. Papers should be submitted non-anonymously and be prepared in PDF format in accordance with the IOS formatting guidelines found at

http://www.iospress.nl/service/authors/latex-and-word-tools-for-book-authors/

The Easychair submission page can be found at:

https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=fois2014 (Select the track 'Research Paper')

As with previous FOIS conferences, the proceedings will be published as a volume in the IOS Press series 'Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications'.

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CONFERENCE ORGANISATION
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General Chair: 
Laure Vieu (CNRS, France)

Program Chairs: 
Pawel Garbacz (Catholic University of Lublin, Poland)
Oliver Kutz (Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany)

Local Organization: 
Giancarlo Guizzardi (Federal University of Espirito Santo Brazil)
Renato Rocha Souza (FGV, Brazil)

Workshops:
Robert Hoehndorf (University of Cambridge, UK)

Ontology Competition:
Till Mossakowski (Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany)

Early Career Symposium:
Marion Haemmerli (University of Lausanne, Switzerland)
Torsten Hahmann (University of Maine, USA)
Claudio Masolo (ISTC-CNR, Italy)

Publicity:
Janna Hastings (European Bioinformatics Institute, UK)
Fernanda Baiao (Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)