The organizers are happy to announce the Call for Papers and Proposals for the 15th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2016).

ISWC is the premier venue for presenting innovative systems and research results related to the Semantic Web and Linked Data, attracting yearly a large number of high quality submissions and participants from both, industry and academia. ISWC brings together researchers from different areas, such as artificial intelligence, databases, natural language processing, information systems, human computer interaction, information retrieval, web science, etc., who investigate, develop and use novel methods and technologies for accessing, interpreting and using information on the Web in a more effective way.

ISWC 2016 will be held in Kobe, Japan, from October 17 -21, 2016.

In this announcement:
1. Call for Papers
2. HTML Submission Guide
3. Call for Workshops and Tutorial proposals
4. Student Grants
5. Important dates

For any addition questions, don't hesitate to contact us:
Website: http://iswc2016.semanticweb.org
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/113652365383847
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ISWC2016

1. Call for Papers
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For 2016, we present the following tracks, which are now open for submission.
Overview: http://iswc2016.semanticweb.org/pages/calls.html

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Call for Research Track Papers
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In this track of ISWC 2016, we are looking for novel and significant research contributions addressing theoretical, analytical, empirical, and practical aspects of this broad field. While we welcome work that relates to the W3C Semantic Web recommendations (e.g., RDF, OWL, SPARQL, etc.), we encourage submissions that investigate other approaches to the intersection of semantics and the Web.

All papers will be assessed by a program committee. Each paper will be reviewed by at least four committee members, including one senior member. The review criteria used are outlined on the webpage (see below).

We also encourage authors to include pointers to additional material to substantiate the claims and findings discussed in their papers. Additional sources of material include extended technical reports, source code, datasets, as well as links to applications. Authors might consider submitting a separate paper describing these additional resources to the Resources Track.

Before submitting, authors are asked to consult the calls of the other tracks featured at ISWC 2016 and to choose the track that best suits their contribution. To produce a coherent conference program the track chairs may suggest transferring a submission to a different track of the conference with authors consent. However, the submission of the same work to multiple tracks is not allowed and may result in a rejection of the work across all tracks without a review.

Detailed info: http://iswc2016.semanticweb.org/pages/calls/research-track.html

Program Chairs
* Paul Groth - Elsevier (pgroth@gmail.com)
* Elena Simperl - University of Southampton (e.simperl@soton.ac.uk)

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Call for Applications (Emerging, In-Use, Industry) Track
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Semantic technologies are reaching maturity on the web, especially through the increase in their use to publish, structure and make sense of web data, whether they are in the form of linked data, through schema.org, or even with semantics included in other data formats than RDF (CSV, JSON, etc). The Applications (Emerging, In-Use, Industry) Track at ISWC 2016 provides a forum for the community to explore the benefits and challenges of applying semantic technologies in concrete, practical applications, in contexts ranging from industry to government and science. We are especially interested this year in applications that use the emerging knowledge graphs or semantic technologies on the web together with data mining, reasoning, machine learning, or natural language processing techniques to the benefit of concrete, real-world scenarios. We are also looking for descriptions of applied and validated industry solutions as software tools, systems or architecture that benefit from the adoption of semantic technologies.

Detailed info: http://iswc2016.semanticweb.org/pages/calls/applications.html

Program Chairs
* Markus Krötzsch - TU Dresden Germany (markus.kroetzsch@tu-dresden.de)
* Freddy Lecue - IBM Research, Ireland (freddy.lecue@ie.ibm.com)

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Call for Doctoral Consortium Papers
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The ISWC 2016 Doctoral Consortium will take place as part of the 15th International Semantic Web Conference in Kobe, Japan. This forum will provide PhD students an opportunity to share and develop their research ideas in a critical but supportive environment, to get feedback from mentors who are senior members of the Semantic Web research community, to explore issues related to academic and research careers, and to build relationships with other Semantic Web PhD students from around the world.

The Consortium aims to broaden the perspectives and to improve the research and communication skills of these students.

The Doctoral Consortium is intended for students who have a specific research proposal and some preliminary results, but who have sufficient time prior to completing their dissertation to benefit from the consortium experience. Generally, students in their second or third year of PhD will benefit the most from the Doctoral Consortium. In the Consortium, the students will present their proposals and get specific feedback and advice on how to improve their research plan.

All proposals submitted to the Doctoral Consortium will undergo a thorough reviewing process with a view to providing detailed and constructive feedback. The international program committee will select the best submissions for presentation at the Doctoral Consortium.

We anticipate that students with accepted submissions at the Doctoral Consortium will receive travel fellowships to offset some of the travel costs.

Detailed info: http://iswc2016.semanticweb.org/pages/calls/doctoral-consortium.html

Program Chairs
* Philippe Cudré-Mauroux - University of Freiburg, Switzerland
* Natasha Noy - Google Inc.
* Riichiro Mizoguchi - JAIST, Japan

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Call for Posters and Demos
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The ISWC 2016 Posters and Demonstrations complement the paper tracks of the conference and offer an opportunity for presenting late-breaking research results, on-going research projects, and speculative or innovative work in progress. The informal setting of the Posters and Demonstrations encourages presenters and participants to engage in discussions about the work. Such discussions can be invaluable inputs for the future work of the presenters, while offering participants an effective way to broaden their knowledge of the emerging research trends and to network with other researchers.

We invite submissions relevant to the area of the Semantic Web and which address, but are not limited to, the topics of the Research Track; the Application Track; and the Resource Track. Technical posters, reports on Semantic Web software systems (free or commercial), descriptions of completed work, and work in progress are all welcome. Demonstrations are intended to showcase innovative Semantic Web related implementations and technologies, both in academia and in industry.

We explicitly welcome entries from the industry. However, submissions for posters and demos should go beyond pure advertisements of commercial software packages and convey a minimal scientific contribution.

Authors of full papers accepted for the Research Track; the Application Track; and the Resource Track are explicitly invited to submit a demonstration. The submission should be formatted as the other posters and demonstrations but must cite the accepted full paper and needs to include an explanation of its added value with respect to the conference paper. The added value could include: a) extended results and experiments not presented in the conference paper for reasons of space, or b) a demonstration of a supporting prototype implementation.

Detailed info: http://iswc2016.semanticweb.org/pages/calls/posters-demos.html

Posters and Demos Track Chairs
* Takahiro Kawamura - Japan Science and Technology Agency, Japan (takahiro.kawamura@jst.go.jp)
* Heiko Paulheim - University of Mannheim, Germany (heiko@informatik.uni-mannheim.de)

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Call for Resources Track Papers
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Resources such as datasets, ontologies, workflows, software tools or evaluation benchmarks are important outputs of any scientific work. Sharing these resources with the research community does not only ensure the reproducibility of one’s results, but also has the benefit of supporting other researchers in their own work. Although high quality shared resources have a key role and an essential impact on the advancement of a research community, the academic acknowledgement for sharing such resources is low. Therefore, many researchers primarily focus on publishing scientific papers and lack the motivation to share their resources. An additional challenge is that resources are often shared without following best practices, for example, at non-permanent URLs that become unavailable within a few months. A recent large-scale study identified that 20% of papers providing resources via URLs suffer from URL rot
(http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0115253).

The ISWC 2016 Resources Track aims to encourage resource sharing following best practice within the Semantic Web community by calling for submissions of resources and their accompanying papers. This track calls for contributions that provide a concise and clear description of a resource and its (expected) usage. Typical resource types are: ontologies, vocabularies, datasets, benchmarks and replication studies, services and software. Besides these established types of resources, we also welcome the submission of new types of resources such as ontology design patterns, crowdsourcing task designs, workflows, methodologies, protocols and measures, and so forth.

Detailed info: http://iswc2016.semanticweb.org/pages/calls/resource-track.html

Program Chairs
* Alasdair Gray - Heriot-Watt University, United Kingdom (a.j.g.gray@hw.ac.uk)
* Marta Sabou - Vienna University of Technology, Austria (martasabou@gmail.com)

2. HTML Submission Guide
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This year we have added an additional option to allow for the submission of articles formatted using HTML. Authors choosing to submit using HTML still need to comply with the page limit and layout requirements of the conference. It’s the author’s responsibility to ensure that reviewers can easily access their submission. On http://iswc2016.semanticweb.org/pages/calls/html-submission.html, you can find helpful tools that can make HTML submissions easier.

Your HTML submission with any extensions if accepted will be available on the ISWC web page in preprint form with all the new elements that you’ve included.

3. Call for Workshops and Tutorial proposals
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In addition to the regular research and workshop program, ISWC 2016 will feature a tutorial program addressing the diverse interests of its audience: Semantic Web practitioners that wish to learn about new technologies, novices to the Semantic Web interested in introductory tutorials to key Semantic Web / Linked Data topics, government and industry representatives focusing on the applicability of Semantic Web / Linked Data technologies in practical settings.
We hereby invite you to submit a tutorial proposal on a topic relevant to the ISWC 2016 audience.

Detailed info: http://iswc2016.semanticweb.org/pages/calls/tutorials.html

Besides tutorials, ISWC will host a number of workshops on topics related to the general theme of the conference. The role of the workshops is to provide a context for a focused and intensive scientific exchange among researchers interested in a particular topic. As such, workshops are the primary venues for the exploration of emerging ideas as well as for the discussion of novel aspects of established research topics.
We invite you to submit a proposal for workshops on a topic of interest to ISWC attendees.

Detailed info: http://iswc2016.semanticweb.org/pages/calls/workshops.html

Workshops & Tutorials Chairs
* Chiara Ghidini - Bruno Kessler Foundation, Trento, Italy (ghidini@fbk.eu)
* Heiner Stuckenschmidt - Data- and Web Science Group, University of Mannheim, Germany (heiner@dwslab.de)

4. Student Grants
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If you are a student interested in attending ISWC 2016 you may be eligible to apply for a grant to support the costs of travel and lodging. This year, travel grants are funded by the Semantic Web Science Association (SWSA) and the US National Science Foundation (NSF).

Detailed info: http://iswc2016.semanticweb.org/pages/calls/student-grants.html

5. Important Dates
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Workshop proposals due March 10, 2016
Tutorial proposals due March 15, 2016
Notifications of workshop proposals out April 15, 2016
Notifications of tutorial proposals out April 20, 2016
Abstracts due (Research, Applications, Resource tracks) April 20, 2016
Submissions due (Research, Applications, Resource tracks) April 30, 2016
DC submissions due May 30, 2016
Author rebuttal period starts (Research, Applications, Resource tracks) June 12, 2016
Author rebuttal period ends (Research, Applications, Resource tracks) June 15, 2016
Notifications for Research, Applications, Resource tracks out June 30, 2016
Notifications for DC applicants out July 01, 2016
Poster/Demo submissions due July 07, 2016
Workshop papers due July 07, 2016
Metadata for Research, Applications, Resource tracks due July 08, 2016
Camera-ready papers for Research, Applications, Resource tracks due July 18, 2016
Workshop paper notifications sent July 30, 2016
Poster/Demo notifications sent August 07, 2016
Camera-ready copies for DC papers August 15, 2016
Camera-ready papers for workshops August 25, 2016
Camera-ready copies for poster and demos August 30, 2016
Student activity applications due August 31, 2016
Early registration deadline September 10, 2016
Turorial materials due September 19, 2016
Last day to reserve a hotel room at confence rates September 30, 2016
Last day to avoid late registration fee October 05, 2016
Workshops and tutorials October 17-18, 2016
Conference October 19-21, 2016