[DL] CFP: Semantic Web Journal - Special Issue on Expressive Natural Language Interfaces for the Semantic Web

[Stamatia Dasiopoulou]

***Apologies for cross-posting ***

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Semantic Web Journal - Call for papers: Special Issue on
Expressive Natural Language Interfaces for the Semantic Web 
<http://www.semantic-web-journal.net/blog/call-papers-special-issue-expressive-natural-language-interfaces-semantic-web>
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As the amount of structured knowledge published as Linked Data and 
stored in proprietary knowledge bases keeps growing, so does the need 
for effective ways to query it and access it. Aiming towards more 
intuitive and human-readable alternatives to formal query and knowledge 
representation languages, research in Question Answering (QA) for the 
Semantic Web has received increasing interest in the past years, leading 
to systems of varying expressiveness as well as to the dedicated QALD 
series of evaluation campaigns. However, and despite the gradual shift 
towards increasingly more complex question constructions (e.g. questions 
including superlatives and quantifiers), the primary focus remains 
largely on factoid questions that admit to lightweight models typically 
endorsed in Linked Data sets and lightweight knowledge bases, such as 
DBpedia. On the other side, the main focus of investigations into the 
communication of the content of semantic repositories has been on mere 
verbalization of ontologies, with limited natural language generation 
techniques and interactivity with end users.

As a result, much of the available knowledge that is inherently 
characterized by complex relational contexts, such as commonly 
confronted in, among others, pervasive computing and healthcare 
application domains, remains still inaccessible for non-Semantic Web 
experts. Adhering often to pattern-based modelling, interaction over 
such knowledge poses additional challenges, since the conceptual 
granularity mismatch between the user question and the underlying 
conceptualization is further aggravated by the encapsulation of domain 
semantics inside conceptual layers of abstraction, often including 
reification and container classes. Going beyond the lightweight models 
that Linked Data and knowledge bases such as DBpedia admit to, building 
Natural Language (NL) interfaces for querying and accessing conceptually 
rich knowledge bases poses additional challenges. These include support 
for complex NL questions and flexible, context-aware query 
interpretation, as well as more intuitive answer communication paradigms.

The aim of this special issue is to foster investigations into 
expressive NL interfaces for the Semantic Web that go beyond the 
discovery of connections between ground facts in large but conceptually 
lightweight knowledge bases, and address in amore integral way the 
challenges involved in bridging the gap between the way users 
communicate their information needs, the way domain knowledge is 
captured, and the way the requested information is communicated.

Topics of interest
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We solicit original papers addressing the challenges involved in 
building NL interfaces for conceptually rich knowledge bases, i.e. 
effective paradigms for formalizing and translating complex NL questions 
into structured queries so that pertinent answers can be retrieved from 
the underlying knowledge bases, as well as for rendering ontological 
representations that admit to rich relational contexts in adequate 
natural language. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):
- Contextual query answering
- Pattern-based query interpretation
- Knowledge patterns in NL analysis and generation
- SPARQL query generation
- Hybrid question answering (OWL, rules, graphs)
- Graph-based query evaluation
- Language resources for question answering
- Ontology-based NL generation
- Querying over complex temporal contexts
- Multi-lingual question answering
- Uncertainty handling in question answering
- Coupling of ontologies with machine learning for question answering
- Applications in healthcare, pervasive computing, biomedical, etc.
- Web and social media mining for semantic knowledge extraction
- Ontology-based linguistic annotations for NL generation

Submission Instructions
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Submissions shall be made through the Semantic Web journal website at 
http://www.semantic-web-journal.net. Prospective authors must take 
notice of the submission guidelines posted at 
http://www.semantic-web-journal.net/authors. Note that you need to 
request an account on the website for submitting a paper. Please 
indicate in the cover letter that it is for the "Expressive NLIs for the 
Semantic Web" special issue. All manuscripts will be reviewed based on 
the SWJ open and transparent review policy and will be made available 
online during the review process.

Important Dates
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Submission deadline: 30-Oct-2016
Notification of acceptance: 15-Jan-2017

Guest Editors
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Stamatia Dasiopoulou, Pompeu Fabra University, Spain
Georgios Meditskos, Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Greece
Leo Wanner, ICREA and Pompeu Fabra University, Spain
Stefanos Vrochidis, Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Greece
Philipp Cimiano, Bielefeld University, Germany


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