6th International Workshop on Semantic Web and Ontology Design for Cultural Heritage, SWODCH 2026
October 25 or 26, 2026, Bari, Italy
Co-located with ISWC 2026
https://www.loa.istc.cnr.it/index.php/swodch-2026/

*WORKSHOP SCOPE AND AIMS*
SWODCH 2026 is the sixth edition of the International Workshop on Semantic Web and Ontology Design for Cultural Heritage. The purpose of SWODCH is twofold. First, it aims to gather original research on foundational issues arising from the design of conceptual models, ontologies, and Semantic Web (SW) technologies for Cultural Heritage (CH) and the Digital Humanities (DH). The heterogeneous and multi-format data available in these domains call for principled methodologies and technologies to semantically characterise, integrate, and reason over data, as well as to support its retrieval, management, analysis, and visualisation. The workshop also welcomes studies addressing the philosophical and social analysis of CH and DH data and knowledge representation models, as ontologies in these domains often need to account for the historical and social dimensions of data. Second, SWODCH aims to bring together stakeholders - scholars from Computer Science and the Humanities and GLAM professionals, representatives from CH institutions, etc. - who are involved in the development and deployment of concrete SW solutions for Cultural Heritage. This includes solutions for building, managing, exploring, visualising, or mining concrete or virtual knowledge graphs. In this context, SW solutions should be designed in accordance with the FAIR principles and support the creation of CH datasets and applications that adhere to these standards.

*IMPORTANT DATES*
- Paper submission deadline: June 26, 2026
- Notification of acceptance: July 24, 2026
- Camera-ready papers: July 31, 2026
- Workshop Date: October 25/26, 2026

*LOCATION*
SWODCH 2026 will be co-located with the 25th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) in Bari, Italy.

*LIST OF TOPICS*
Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

• Conceptual analysis and ontology design for the Digital Humanities
- Domain ontologies or conceptual models for different fields of Humanities
- Methodological aspects of ontology development for the DH
- Application of formal ontology theories in the DH
- Case studies and lessons learnt from the use of standard ontologies
- Philosophical and sociological analysis of digital models and modelling practices in DH
- Social studies on the policies towards the standardization of ontologies in DH
- AI-enhanced approaches for ontology engineering and knowledge graphs in DH and CH, including the use of large language models, multimodal AI, and generative systems, with the evaluation of their environmental costs (mandatory), as well as their ethical, epistemic, and governance implications

• Semantic Web Technologies and Applications for Cultural Heritage
- SW technologies for CH content creation, annotation and extraction
- SW architectures and infrastructures for CH
- Interoperability of CH collections
- CH knowledge graphs
- Searching, querying and visualising CH data on the SW
- Ontology-based access to CH data
- Publishing CH data on the Web
- Navigating through and browsing CH data on the Web
- SW solutions for trust and provenance issues in CH
- SW applications for digital libraries, museums, tourism, the creative industries, etc.

*SUBMISSION GUIDELINES*
We accept two different types of contributions:
- Full papers for presenting original unpublished work, neither submitted to nor accepted for presentation at any other venue. Submitted *full papers* should be between 10 and 12 pages, including references.
- Short papers for presenting work in progress, brief descriptions of doctoral theses, or general overviews of research projects. Submitted *short papers* should be between 6 and 8 pages, including references.

All contributions to the workshop must be submitted according to the 1-column CEUR-ART style format. The style files for this format are available at http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-XXX/CEURART.zip. An Overleaf page is also available for LaTeX users: https://www.overleaf.com/read/gwhxnqcghhdt.

Papers should be submitted in PDF format through this link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=swodch2026. 

Papers will be reviewed on the basis of their scientific merit, originality and relevance to the workshop. Each paper will be reviewed by at least three Program Committee members.

Diversity and inclusion statement. We kindly ask authors to adopt inclusive language in their papers and presentations (https://dbdni.github.io/pages/inclusivewriting.html and https://dbdni.github.io/pages/inclusivetalks.html), and all participants to adopt a proper code of conduct (https://dbdni.github.io/pages/codeofconduct.html).

*PUBLICATION*
Accepted papers will be published in a CEUR-WS volume.

*WORKSHOP FORMAT*
The workshop will be a full-day event. It will consist of an opening session, paper presentations, one invited talk and a session with presentations of active research projects in this area. The workshop will conclude with a moderated roundtable on open challenges and future research directions for Semantic Web technologies in Cultural Heritage, particularly in light of recent advancements in AI.

*PC CHAIRS*
- Luca Biccheri, University of Geneva, Switzerland
- Antonis Bikakis, University College London, U.K.
- Roberta Ferrario, ISTC-CNR, Italy
- Béatrice Markhoff, University of Tours, France
- Alessandro Mosca, ISTC-CNR, Italy
- Marianna Nicolosi Asmundo, University of Catania, Italy