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2nd International Workshop on Semantics for Biodiversity (S4BioDiv)
http://fusion.cs.uni-jena.de/s4biodiv2017/

co-located with the 16th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2017)
http://iswc2017.semanticweb.org
Vienna, Austria, October 21-25, 2017

Workshop Description
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Biodiversity research aims at comprehending the totality and variability of organisms, their morphology, genetics, life history, habitats and geographical ranges, it is usually used to refer to biological diversity at three levels: genetics, species, and ecology. Biodiversity is an outstanding domain that deals with heterogeneous datasets and concepts generated from a large number of disciplines in order to build a coherent picture of the extend of life on earth. The presence of such a myriad of data resources makes integrative biodiversity increasingly important in the life sciences research. However, it is severely strangled by the way data and information are made available. The Semantic Web approach enhances data exchange, discovery, and integration by providing common formats to achieve a formalized conceptual environment.
This workshop aims to bring together computer scientists and biologists, working on Semantic Web approaches for biodiversity and related areas such as agriculture or agro-ecology. The goal is to exchange experiences, build a state of the art of realizations and challenges and reuse and adapt solutions that have been proposed in other domains. The workshop focuses on presenting challenging issues and solutions for the design of high quality biodiversity information systems based on Semantic Web techniques.

Important Dates
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Abstracts due: July 14th, 2017
Workshop papers due: July 21st, 2017
Notification of acceptance: August 24th, 2017
Camera ready version: September 7th, 2017
Workshops held: October 21st or 22nd, 2017

Topics and application domains
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We welcome topics related to the application and development of semantic technologies to support research in the biodiversity domain and related areas. These include, but are not limited to the following areas:
Applications of Semantic Web technologies for biodiversity
+ Semantic data integration
+ Development and design of domain specific ontologies
+ Ontology-based applications
+ Semantic annotation of biodiversity data
+ Semantic approaches for the discovery of biodiversity data
+ Semantic support for scientific workflows
+ Data provenance and reproducibility
+ Data lifecycle management
+ Knowledge extraction and text mining
+ Ontology learning
+ Standards for biodiversity Data
+ Linked Open biodiversity Data
+ Ontology development for biodiversity
+ Semantic representation of biodiversity data
+ Interoperability of biodiversity and earth observation data

Application domains:
+ Biodiversity
+ Agronomy
+ Plant sciences
+ Agro-ecology

Paper Submission Guidelines
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Authors are invited to submit electronically original contributions in English. Submitted papers should not exceed 12 pages for long papers, 8 pages for position papers and 6 pages for short and system papers and must be formatted according to the Springer LNCS guidelines.
Submissions will only be accepted in a PDF format. Papers must be submitted through the easychair system at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=s4biodiv2017

Proceedings of the workshop will be published online as a volume in the CEUR Workshop Proceedings series (CEUR-WS.org).

Workshop Chairs
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Alsayed Algergawy (Institute of Computer Science, Friedrich Schiller Universität Jena, Germany)
Naouel Karam (Institute of Computer Science, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany)
Friederike Klan (Institute of Computer Science, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany)
Clement Jonquet (LIRMM, University of Montpellier, France & Stanford University))

Programme Committee (to be completed)
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+ Birgitta Koenig-Ries (FSU Jena, Germany)
+ Ramona Walls (University of Arizona, USA)
+ Jens Kattge (FSU Jena, Germany)
+ Claudia Müller-Birn (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany)
+ Salima Benbernou (Université Paris 5, France)
+ Harald Sack (FIZ Karlsruhe, Germany)
+ Isabelle Mougenot (University of Montpellier, France)
+ Konstantin Todorov, LIRMM (University of Montpellier, France)
+ Caterina Caracciolo (Food & Agriculture Organisation, Italy)
+ Brandon Whitehead (GISP, CAB, UKI)
+ Pierre Bonnet (CIRAD, France)
+ Pelin Yilmaz (Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology)
+ Robert Guralnick (Florida Museum of Natural History)
+ Pier Luigi Buttigieg (Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology)
+ Mark Schildhauer (National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis)
+ Dag Endresen (GBIF Norway, Natural History Museum in Oslo)
+ Katy Wolstencroft (LIACS, Leiden University)
+ Pierre Larmande (Institute of Research for Development, Marseille)
+ Aldo Gangemi (ISIC, Rome)
+ Pascal Neveu (INRA, Montpellier)
+ Elizabeth Arnaud (Biodiversity International)
+ Pythagoras Karampiperis (National Center of Scientific Research, Greece)
+ Manuel Ruiz (CIRAD-BIOS, Montpellier)