URSW 2010 – Call for Papers

  6th International Workshop on
  Uncertainty Reasoning for the Semantic Web
        http://c4i.gmu.edu/ursw/2010

           In conjunction with the
  9th International Semantic Web Conference

              Shanghai, China
              November 7, 2010

You are invited to participate in the upcoming workshop on Uncertainty
Reasoning for the Semantic Web (URSW), to be held as part of the 9th
International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) in November of 2010 at the
Shanghai International Convention Center, China.

ISWC is a major international forum for presenting visionary research
on all aspects of the Semantic Web. The Uncertainty Reasoning Workshop
is an exciting opportunity for collaboration and cross-fertilization
between the uncertainty reasoning community and the Semantic Web
community.

Effective methods for reasoning under uncertainty are vital for realizing
many aspects of the Semantic Web vision, but the
ability of current-generation web technology to handle uncertainty
is extremely limited. Recently, there has been a groundswell of
demand for uncertainty reasoning technology among Semantic Web
researchers and developers.

This surge of interest creates a unique opening to bring together two
communities with a clear commonality of interest but little history of
interaction. By capitalizing on this opportunity, URSW could spark
dramatic progress toward realizing the Semantic Web vision.

AUDIENCE

The intended audience for this workshop includes the following:

* Researchers in uncertainty reasoning technologies with interest in
Semantic Web and Web-related technologies.
* Semantic web developers and researchers.
* People in the knowledge representation community with interest in the
Semantic Web.
* Ontology researchers and ontological engineers.
* Web services researchers and developers with interest in the Semantic Web.
* Developers of tools designed to support Semantic Web
implementation, e.g., Jena developers, Protégé developers,
OWL-API developers...

TOPIC LIST

We intend to have an open discussion on any topic relevant to
the general subject of uncertainty in the Semantic Web (including
fuzzy theory, probability theory, and other approaches). Therefore,
the following list should be just an initial guide.

* Syntax and semantics for extensions to Semantic Web languages
to enable representation of uncertainty
* Logical formalisms to support uncertainty in Semantic Web languages
* Probability theory as a means of assessing the likelihood that
terms in different ontologies refer to the same or similar concepts
* Architectures for applying plausible reasoning to the problem of ontology
mapping
* Using fuzzy approaches to deal with imprecise concepts within ontologies
* The concept of a probabilistic ontology and its relevance to the Semantic
Web
* Best practices for representing uncertain, incomplete, ambiguous, or
controversial information in the Semantic Web
* The role of uncertainty as it relates to Web services
* Interface protocols with support for uncertainty as a means to improve
interoperability among Web services
* Uncertainty reasoning techniques applied to trust issues in the Semantic
Web
* Existing implementations of uncertainty reasoning tools in the context of
the Semantic Web
* Issues and techniques for integrating tools for representing and reasoning
with uncertainty
* The future of uncertainty reasoning for the Semantic Web

IMPORTANT DATES

September 7, 2010   Paper submissions due
September 30, 2010  Paper acceptance notification
October 15, 2010    Camera-ready papers due
November 4, 2010    Presentations due
November 7, 2010    6th Workshop on Uncertainty Reasoning for
the Semantic Web

SUBMISSION DETAILS

The URSW will be accepting submissions of technical papers and position
papers. Each submission will be evaluated for acceptability by at least
three members of the Program Committee. Decisions about acceptance will be
based on relevance to the above topic list, originality, potential
significance, topicality and clarity. Since all accepted papers will
be presented at the workshop, we require that at least one of the submitting
authors must be a registered participant at the ISWC 2010
Conference, and committed to attend the URSW Workshop.

Submissions to the Workshop are only accepted in electronic format and
should be sent via the workshop’s submission site:
 http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ursw2010

Papers must be formatted in the style of the Springer Publications format
for Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS). This is the
very same format adopted by the ISWC 2010. For complete details,
see Springer’s Author Instructions
(http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0).

Technical papers submitted to the URSW Workshop must not exceed
12 pages, including figures. Submissions exceeding this limit
will not be reviewed.
Position papers consist of a summary of ideas, projects, or any research
efforts that are relevant to the URSW Workshop must not exceed 4 pages.

Following the general acceptance rules of the ISWC 2010 conference, papers
that, at the time of submission, are under review for or have already been
published in or accepted for publication in a journal or another conference
will not be accepted to the URSW workshop.

PRESENTATION AND PUBLICATION

URSW 2010 will be a full-day workshop divided into three sessions.
Two of those sessions will be devoted to paper presentations, while
the remaining session will be planned in a format that invites an
open debate on the results, conclusions, recommendations, and
follow-up work of the URSW-XG group. We also plan to convey a
work meeting after the workshop, in case the last session need
to be extended.

All papers accepted to the URSW will be presented during the
workshop and published in the workshop proceedings, which will
be available as a separate publication after the Conference.
Authors of accepted technical papers will have 20 minutes to
present their work, while authors of accepted position
papers will have a 10-minute slot to share their ideas. Both
technical and position papers will be published in the URSW
Workshop proceedings, to be available after the ISWC 2010 Conference.

In addition, technical papers accepted for presentation at the URSW 2010
will be eligible for participating in the selection to the planned Springer
LNCS volume on Uncertainty Reasoning for the Semantic Web
– Vol. II. This will be the second volume of this series and will
include selected papers from URSW 2008 to URSW 2010.

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

The organizing committee is as follows (in alphabetical order):

* Fernando Bobillo - University of Granada, Spain.
* Rommel N. Carvalho - George Mason University, USA
* Paulo C. G. Costa - George Mason University, USA.
* Claudia d'Amato - University of Bari, Italy.
* Nicola Fanizzi - University of Bari, Italy.
* Kathryn Laskey - George Mason University, USA.
* Ken Laskey – MITRE Corporation, USA.
* Thomas Lukasiewicz - Oxford University, UK.
* Trevor Martin - University of Bristol, UK.
* Matthias Nickles - Technical University of Munich, Germany.
* Michael Pool - Convera, Inc., USA.

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

The confirmed members of the program committee are the following (in
alphabetical order):

* Fernando Bobillo - Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain
* Rommel N. Carvalho - George Mason University, USA
* Paulo C. G. Costa - George Mason University, USA
* Fabio G. Cozman - Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil
* Claudia D'Amato - University of Bari, Italy
* Nicola Fanizzi - University of Bari, Italy
* Marcelo Ladeira - University of Brasilia, Brazil
* Kathryn B. Laskey - George Mason University, USA
* Kenneth J. Laskey - MITRE Corporation, USA
* Thomas Lukasiewicz - Oxford University, UK
* Trevor Martin - University of Bristol, UK
* Matthias Nickles - Technical University of Munich, Germany
* Jeff Z. Pan - University of Aberdeen, UK
* Michael Pool - Convera, Inc., USA
* Livia Predoiu - Universität Mannheim, Germany
* Guilin Qi - University of Karlsruhe, Germany
* Dave Robertson - University of Edinburgh, UK
* Daniel Sánchez - University of Granada, Spain
* Sergej Sizov - University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany
* Giorgos Stoilos - Oxford University, UK
* Umberto Straccia – ISTI-CNR, Pisa, Italy
* Andreas Tolk - Old Dominion University, USA
* Johanna Voelker - University of Karlsruhe, Germany

We are looking forward to seeing you in Shanghai!