5th International Workshop on Uncertainty Reasoning for the Semantic Web (URSW 2009)
http://c4i.gmu.edu/ursw/2009
In conjunction with the 8th International Semantic Web Conference
Washington, D.C. - USA
October 26, 2009
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You are invited to participate in the upcoming workshop on Uncertainty
Reasoning for the Semantic Web (URSW), to be held as part of the 8th
International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) in October of 2009 at the
Westfields Conference Center near Washington, D.C., USA.

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 and Protégé-OWL 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
---------------

• August 10, 2009 Paper submissions due
• September 2, 2009 Paper acceptance notification
• September 30, 2008 Camera-ready papers due
• October 20, 2009 Presentations due
• October 26, 2008 5th 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 2009
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=ursw2009. 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 2009. For complete details, see Springer’s Author
Instructions (http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-2-72376-0).
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 and must not exceed 4 pages.
Following the general acceptance rules of the ISWC 2009 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 2009 will be a half-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.
In addition, both technical and position papers will be published in the
URSW Workshop proceedings, to be available after the ISWC 2009 Conference.


Program Committee
-----------------

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

• Fernando Bobillo - University of Granada, Spain.
• Silvia Calegari - University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy.
• Rommel 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. Member of the W3C Advisory Board.
• Thomas Lukasiewicz - Oxford University, UK.
• Anders L. Madsen - Hugin Expert A/S, Denmark.
• Trevor Martin - University of Bristol, UK.
• Matthias Nickles - University of Bath, UK.
• Jeff Pan - University of Aberdeen, UK.
• Yung Peng - University of Maryland, Baltimore County, USA.
• Michael Pool - Convera, Inc., USA.
• Livia Predoiu - Universität Mannheim, Germany.
• Guilin Qi - University of Karlsruhe, Germany.
• Carlos Henrique Ribeiro - Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica, Brazil.
• Dave Robertson - University of Edinburgh, UK.
• Daniel Sánchez - University of Granada, Spain.
• Sergej Sizov - University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany.
• Pavel Smrz - Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic.
• Giorgos Stoilos - National Technical University of Athens, Greece.
• Umberto Straccia - Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologie dell'Informazione "A. Faedo", Italy.
• Andreas Tolk - Old Dominion University, USA.
• Peter Vojtas - Charles University, Czech Republic.
• Johanna Voelker - University of Karlsruhe, Germany.


Organizing Committee
--------------------

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

• Fernando Bobillo - University of Granada, Spain.
• 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.
• Pavel Smrz - Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic.


We are looking forward to seeing you in D.C.!