The 10th edition of the Special Track on Metadata and Semantics for Agriculture, Food & Environment is hosted by MTSR’17, the 11th International Conference on Metadata and Semantics Research and will be held at Tallinn University in Tallinn, Estonia from November 28 - December 1, 2017.

This track aims to bring together academics, researchers and practitioners that are dealing with theoretical, methodological, experimental and application-oriented aspects of metadata, ontologies and semantics research, applied to agriculture, food and environment. It aims to serve as a discussion forum where researchers and interested experts will present the results of their work, and establish collaboration with other groups that are working on related subjects. In addition, it aims to outline the rich potential of these subjects as an application field for advanced metadata- and semantic-driven systems and services.


**Important Dates**

*July 10th 2017: Paper submission deadline (extended)
*July 31st, 2017: Notification of acceptance
*August 27th, 2017: Camera-ready papers due
*November 28th –December 1st, 2017: Conference in Tallinn University, Tallinn (Estonia)


**Topics**

Topics include but are not limited to contributions dealing with the following issues in the context of agriculture, food & environment:

* Typology of metadata and metadata implementations
* The value and cost of metadata
* Quality evaluation in the use of Metadata
* Metadata reusability
* Empirical studies on metadata and/or ontologies usage
* Ontologies and Ontology-based Knowledge Management Systems
* Linked Data and its applications
* Use and re-use of digital data
* Content discovery services, search, information retrieval and data visualization applications.


**Paper Submissions**

Interested authors can submit to https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mtsr2017

The following types of presentation are invited:
*Full papers (12 pages) reporting complete research
*Short papers (6 pages) presenting ongoing or preliminary research
*Posters (4 pages)

Papers should be original and not previously submitted to other Conferences or Journals. All submissions will be reviewed on the basis of relevance, originality, importance and clarity following a double-blind peer review process. Submissions associated by any MTSR member (e.g. Chairs and PC members of MTSR or any of its Tracks) will follow a double-blind peer review process by an independent review committee.

Submitted papers have to follow the LNCS proceedings formatting style and guidelines. Authors of accepted papers will be asked to register to the Conference and present their work in the form of either oral presentation or poster presentation. The Conference welcomes Workshops and Tutorial on any issues concerning the main themes of MTSR such as metadata, ontologies, Semantic Web, knowledge management, software engineering and digital libraries.


**Conference Proceedings**

Proceedings will be published by Springer in Vol. 755 of the Communications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS) book series. CCIS is abstracted/indexed in Scopus, SCImago, EI-Compendex, Mathematical Reviews, DBLP, Google Scholar. CCIS volumes are also submitted for the inclusion in ISI Proceedings.


**Other Publication Opportunities**

Selected papers might be considered for a revised and extended version to be published in a range of international journals, including the International Journal of Metadata, Semantics and Ontologies (Inderscience) and Program (Emerald).


**Awards**

There are two types of awards: the Best Paper Award and the Best Student Paper Award, both sponsored by euroCRIS.

*Best paper award: This award will be presented to the authors of the best full research paper submitted and presented at the conference.
*Best student paper award: MTSR sponsors a paper competition to recognize excellence in a conference paper contribution whose primary author is a student (normally at a PhD or MRes level). The student is required to present the paper at the MTSR 2017 conference.
Submissions are evaluated on their originality, scientific merits, structure, and clarity of composition.


**Special Track Chairs**

* Juliette Dibie. AgroParisTech & INRA (France)
* Liliana Ibanescu, AgroParisTech & INRA (France)


**Programme Committee**

* Ioannis Athanasiadis, Wageningen University (The Netherlands)
* Patrice Buche, INRA (France)
* Caterina Caracciolo, FAO of the United Nations (Italy)
* Johannes Keizer, FAO of the United Nations (Italy)
* Stasinos Konstantopoulos, NCSR “Demokritos” (Greece)
* Claire Nédellec, INRA (France)
* Jr. Ivo Pierozzi, Embrapa Agricultural Informatics (Brazil)
* Armando Stellato, University of Rome "Tor Vergata" (Italy)
* Maguelonne Teisseire, Irstea Montpellier (France)
* Jan Top, Wageningen Food & Biobased Research (The Netherlands)
* Robert Trypuz, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin (Poland)