(Note: The extended submission deadline is now 5 February, 2011)

CALL FOR PAPERS

12th International Workshop on Coordination, Organizations, Institutions and Norms in Agent Systems,
at the 10th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems
(COIN@AAMAS 2011)

May 3, 2011,
Taipei, Taiwan

http://coin-aamas2011.iiia.csic.es

AIMS and SCOPE

The pervasiveness of open systems raises a range of challenges and opportunities for technologies in the area of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. Open systems comprise loosely coupled entities interacting within a society that usually has some overall measures of quality or efficiency. However, achieving and maintaining a "good" society is difficult to achieve as the participating entities, their modes of interaction or the intended purpose of the system may change over time. Moreover, in the case of open multi-agent systems, the autonomy of the agents can work against the effectiveness of the society. There is therefore a need for tools and techniques for
articulating and/or regulating interactions in order to make the system more effective in attaining collective goals, more certain for participants or more predictable.

Coordination, organizations, institutions and norms are four key governance elements for the regulation of open multi-agent systems, and the COIN workshops constitute a space for debate and exploration of these four elements that are central in the design and use of open systems.

We seek to attract high-quality papers addressing mathematical, logical, computational,
philosophical and pragmatic issues related to those four aspects; also papers concerned with modelling, animation and simulation techniques for these types of multi-agent systems; as well as papers that discuss tools, prototypes and actual working systems. Papers that present formal treatment of topics as well as those that provide experimental support to claims are welcome. We also encourage authors to report on their experience with systems that have been deployed, applications based on regulated open multi-agent systems, and tools for their development. Of particular interest for the workshop are those papers that articulate a challenging or innovative view.

TOPICS OF INTEREST

Topics of particular interest for COIN@AAMAS2011 will include:

* logics, languages and tools for specifying coordination and norms, implementing or simulating organizations and institutions;

* law of open multi-agent systems: regulatory compliance, penalty and sanctions, dispute resolution and conflict prevention;

* agent societies and communities, social networks, electronic institutions and virtual organizations;

* formal lifecycle models: formation, maintenance, evolution and dissolution of organizations, institutions and normative multi-agent systems;

* formal methods for specifying coordination and organizational structures; models for verification, validation and visualisation;

* autonomic institutions and self-organization in multi-agent systems;

* frameworks and protocols for organized and organizational adaptation;

* mechanisms for governance of common pool resources;

* agent environments: physical and institutional resources for physical capability and institutional power;

* discovery, openness and inter-operation in organizations and institutions;

* mixed human-agent coordination and institutions in virtual worlds; participatory simulation.

* reports on implemented systems.

IMPORTANT DATES

February 5, 2011: EXTENDED paper submission deadline
February 27, 2011: Acceptance notification
March 6, 2011: Camera-Ready Copies.
May 2-3, 2011: AAMAS 2011 workshops

VENUE

The workshop will be part of the AAMAS 2011 (Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems) workshop programme, and will take place at the Taipei International Convention Center (TICC) in Taipei, Taiwan in the first week of May.

PROCEEDINGS

Preliminary proceedings will be distributed to AAMAS 2011 registrants in electronic form. Printed workshop notes will NOT be made available to workshop participants. As with previous COIN workshops, revised and extended versions of selected papers will be published in a Springer LNCS volume in combination with the post-proceedings of a second COIN workshop to be held in 2011. That volume will be published as part of the Coordination, Organizations, Institutions, and Norms in Agent Systems book series, with all the indexing, referencing and follow-up benefits associated with an established line of publication. Revised papers must take into account the discussion held during
the workshop, hence only those papers that are presented during the workshop will be considered for inclusion in the post-proceedings volume.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS

For preparation of papers to be submitted please follow the instructions for authors available at the Springer LNCS Web page. The length of each paper including figures and references may not exceed 15 pages. All papers must be written in English and submitted in PDF format. Submission of a paper should be regarded as an undertaking that, should the paper be accepted, at least one of the authors will attend the workshop to present the work.

For submission of papers, please use:
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=coinaamas2011

ORGANIZATION

The programm committee will include the following people. See the workshop Web page for updates (http://coin-aamas2011.iiia.csic.es).

Alex Artikis (National Centre for Scientific Research "Demokritos", Greece)
Guido Boella (University of Torino, Italy)
Olivier Boissier (ENS Mines Saint-Etienne, France)
Cristiano Castelfranchi (ISTC/CNR, Italy)
Antonio Carlos da Rocha Costa (UCPEL, Brazil)
Virginia Dignum (University of Utrecht, Netherlands)
Nicoletta Fornara (University of Lugano, Switzerland)
Jomi-Fred Hubner (University of Blumenau, Brazil)
Christian Lemaitre (Metropolitan Autonomous University, Mexico)
Victor Lesser (University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA)
Eric Matson (Purdue University, USA)
John-Jules Meyer (Utrecht University, Netherlands)
Simon Miles (Kings College London, UK)
Eugenio Oliveira (University of Porto, Portugal)
Andrea Omicini (University of Bologna, Italy)
Sascha Ossowski (University Rey Juan Carlos, Spain)
Julian Padget (University of Bath, UK)
Alessandro Ricci (University of Bologna, Italy)
Juan-Antonio Rodriguez-Aguilar (IIIA-CSIC, Spain)
Tony Savarimuthu (University of Otago, New Zealand)
Christophe Sibertin-Blanc (IRIT, France)
Jaime Sichman (University of Sao Paulo, Brazil)
Viviane Torres da Silva (Fluminense Federal University, Brazil)
Munindar Singh (North Carolina State University, USA)
Catherine Tessier (ONERA, France)
Wamberto Vasconcelos (University of Aberdeen, UK)
Javier Vazquez-Salceda (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Spain)
Harko Verhagen (Stockholm University, Sweden)
Marina de Vos (University of Bath, UK)
George Vouros (University of the Aegean, Greece)
Pinar Yolum (Bogazici University, Turkey)

COIN Steering Committee:

* Alex Artikis (National Centre for Scientific Research "Demokritos", Greece)
* Eric Matson (Purdue University, USA)
* Nicoletta Fornara (University of Lugano, Switzerland)
* George Vouros (University of the Aegean, Greece)
* Jeremy Pitt (Imperial College London, UK)
* Julian Padget (University of Bath, UK)
* Javier Vazquez-Salceda (Technical University of Catalonia, Spain)
* Vivian Torres da Silva (Fluminense Federal University, Brazil)
* Wamberto Vasconcelos (University of Aberdeen, UK)

COIN at AAMAS 2011 Co-Chairs:

Stephen Cranefield (University of Otago, New Zealand)
scranefield@infoscience.otago.ac.nz

Pablo Noriega (IIIA-CSIC, Spain)
pablo@iiia.csic.es