An intelligent information agent is a computational software entity
that is capable of accessing one or multiple, heterogeneous and
distributed information sources, proactively searching for,
mediating, and maintaining relevant information or services on behalf
of its human users, or other collaborating agents, at any time and anywhere.
One key challenge of the development of intelligent and cooperative
information system is to balance the autonomy of networked data,
information, and knowledge sources with the potential payoff of
leveraging them by the appropriate use of such agents.
Research on intelligent information agents and systems is inherently
cross disciplinary covering themes from domains such as AI, HCI,
Internet and Web technologies, information systems, information retrieval,
P2P computing, and multiagent system technologies.

The objective of the international workshop series on cooperative
information agents (CIA), since its establishment in 1997, is to
provide a small but distinguished, interdisciplinary forum for
researchers, programmers, and managers to get informed about, present,
and discuss latest high quality results in research and development
of agent-based intelligent and cooperative information systems, and
applications for the Internet and Web.

TOPICS
======

Topics of interest are but not exclusive:

Systems and Applications of Information Agents
Architectures of information agents.
Prototypes and fielded systems of information agents.
Recommender systems; collaborative cases.
Issues of programming information agents.

Information Agents and Grid Computing
Agent-based grid computing services and infrastructure
Agent-based grid computing applications

Advanced Means of Collaboration and Coordination
Social filtering, cooperative search, group forming, negotiation, etc.
Cooperation in real-time and open environments.
Self-organising information agent systems.
Capability-based mediation between information agents.
Collaboration in peer-to-peer networks.

Agent-Based Knowledge Discovery
Agent-based distributed data mining.
Distributed information retrieval, text, and Web mining.

Information Agents, Web Services, and the Semantic Web
Agent-based information search in the semantic web.
Agent-based service discovery and composition.
Agent-based service matchmaking and brokering
Agent-based distributed ontology mapping and learning.

Mobile Information Agents
Mobile information agents for distributed information retrieval.
Engineering of mobile information agents.
Cooperative mobile information agents.

Information Agents for Pervasive Computing Environments
Visions, applications, surveys; collaborative cases.

Rational Information Agents for E-Business
Models of economic rationality.
Trust and reputation.
Issues of privacy of communication, data security, and
jurisdiction for agent-mediated trading.
Coalition and team formation algorithms.

Intelligent Interfaces for Information Agents
Human-agent interaction for (systems of) information agents.
Life-like characters and avatars.
Information agents for/applied to digital cities.
Advanced, personalized 3-d visualizations of information spaces.
Personalization; collaborative cases.

Adaptive Information Agents
Adaptive information retrieval; collaborative cases.
Reasoning with imperfect information: collaborative cases.
Multi-strategy and meta-learning for cooperative information agents.

PROCEEDINGS
===========

The proceedings of the CIA workshop series are regularly published as volume
of the Springer LNCS subseries LNAI (Lecture Notes on Artificial Intelligence).

Former volumes of the series are
CIA-1997: LNAI 1202, CIA-1998: LNAI 1435, CIA-1999: LNAI 1652,
CIA-2000: LNAI 1860, CIA-2001: LNAI 2182, CIA-2002: LNAI 2446,
CIA-2003: LNAI 2782, CIA 2004: LNAI 3191, CIA 2005 (MATES 2005): LNAI 3550,
CIA-2006: LNAI 4149, CIA-2007: LNAI 4676

The proceedings of the CIA 2008 workshop will be available to the participants
of the workshop at the registration desk.

SPECIAL ISSUE
=============

Extended versions of selected best papers are planned to be published in a
special issue of the International Journal for Multiagent and Grid Systems (IOS Press).

SUBMISSION
==========

For preparation of (camera-ready) papers to be submitted please follow
the instructions for authors available at the Springer LNCS Web page:
http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html

For those not using the Springer LNCS style files: The paper must be
formatted in A4 size using 10 point Times. (If Times is not available,
please use one of the similar fonts widely used in phototypesetting.)
Printing area should be 12.2 x 19.3 cm, and the interline distance
should be arranged in such a way that some 42 to 45 lines occur on a
full-text page.

The length of each paper should not exceed 15 pages.
All papers must be written in English.

Please submit your paper online at

http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cia2008

In case of problems, please contact us immediately for assistance!

Submission of full paper including all figures and references is
either in POSTSCRIPT or PDF format only. In any case, please check
whether the file is really printable on a postscript-level-2 printer
before submitting it.

Double Submission Policy
------------------------

CIA 2008 will not accept full copies of papers that are published
elsewhere. Papers not conforming to the above requirements may be rejected
without review. Submissions will be reviewed for quality, correctness,
sufficient originality, and relevance.

STUDENT SUPPORT
===============

There will be limited financial support provided to a limited number
of students as (co-)authors of accepted papers to present their work
at the CIA 2008 workshop.

AWARDS
======

The CIA 2008 workshop issues both a BEST PAPER award, and a
SYSTEM INNOVATION award to acknowledge and honor highly innovative
research and development, respectively, in the area of intelligent
information agents for the Internet, Web, and semantic Web.

The CIA 2008 BEST PAPER AWARD is sponsored by the workshop series.
The prize money is 300 euros.

The CIA 2008 SYSTEM INNOVATION AWARD is sponsored by
Whitestein Technologies. The prize money is 500 euros.

Nominations for the CIA 2008 SYSTEM INNOVATION AWARD
can be done either by means of regular paper submission,
or through an explicit request for nomination by submitting
a brief (max. 4 pages, 10pt Times) description of the system in terms
of its core functionalities, main techniques used to implement them,
and (publicly available reference to) experimental results,
as well as a summary of the innovative features in comparison to other
existing systems.
After confidential voting by the PC, chairs, and sponsors
of the award the top ranked nominees will be requested to
publicly demonstrate a running prototype of their system
at the workshop to all participants and the jury for a
final public voting.

Both awards will be given during the workshop.

ORGANISATION
============

Matthias Klusch (DFKI Saarbruecken, Germany)
Michal Pechoucek (CTU Prague, Czech Republic)
Axel Polleres (DERI Galway, Ireland)

PROGRAM COMMITTEE
=================

Wolfgang Benn (TU Chemnitz, Germany)
Felix Brandt (U Munich, Germany)
Monique Calisti (Whitestein Technologies, Switzerland)
Jorge Cardoso (UMA Madeira, Portugal)
William Cheung (Hongkong Baptist U, China)
Philippe Cudre-Mauroux (MIT, USA)
Frank Dignum (U Utrecht, The Netherlands)
John Domingue (The Open U, UK)
Boi Faltings (EPF Lausanne, Switzerland)
Michael Fink (TU Vienna, Austria)
Vladimir Gorodetsky (RAS St. Petersburg, Russia)
Francesco Guerra (U Modena, Italy)
Manfred Hauswirth (DERI Galway, Ireland)
Michael Huhns (U South Carolina, USA)
Toru Ishida (Kyoto U, Japan)
Catholijn Jonker (TU Delft, The Netherlands)
Ryszard Kowalczyk (Swinburne U, Australia)
Manolis Koubarakis (TU Crete, Greece)
Sarit Kraus (Bar-Ilan U, Israel)
Victor Lesser (U Massachusetts, USA)
Stefano Lodi (U Bologna, Italy)
Werner Nutt (FU Bozen-Bolzano, Italy)
Sascha Ossowski (U Rey Juan Carlos Madrid, Spain)
Aris Ouksel (U Illinois at Chicago, USA)
Massimo Paolucci (NTT DoCoMo Europe, Germany)
Michael Rovatsos (U Edinburgh, UK)
Jeffrey Rosenschein (Hebrew U, Israel)
Heiko Schuldt (U Basel, Switzerland)
Onn Shehory (IBM Research, Israel)
Katia Sycara (Carnegie Mellon U, USA)
Walt Truszkowski (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, USA)
Rainer Unland (U Duisburg-Essen, Germany)
Frank van Harmelen (VU Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Gottfried Vossen (U Muenster, Germany)
Gerhard Weiss (SCCH, Austria)