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CALL FOR PAPERS
Joint Workshop on Knowledge Evolution and Ontology Dynamics (EvoDyn 2011)
Collocated with the 10th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2011)
October 23rd or 24th, 2011
Bonn, Germany

http://www.ontologydynamics.org/od/index.php/evodyn2011

DESCRIPTION
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EvoDyn builds on the success of the previous editions of the Ontology Dynamics workshop formerly known as IWOD (organised as a part of the ESWC'07, ISWC'08, ISWC'09 and ISWC'10 conferences). EvoDyn continues in the tradition of IWOD in being the core annual event to discuss advances in the broad area of ontology dynamics, and to track recent work directly or indirectly related to the problem of evolving ontologies. This year, however, the scope of the workshop is broadened by a special focus on the knowledge evolution. As ontologies are formal representations of knowledge, the study of their dynamics is an inherent part of investigating the knowledge evolution phenomena, yet it is only one of many relevant aspects this workshop aims to cover in an integral manner.

In particular, the workshop focuses on analysis of trends and change in formal descriptions (i.e., ontologies), but also in associated raw sources of knowledge (scientific publications, unstructured or semi-structured web content, traditional data stores, e-mail or on-line discussion threads, etc.). We are especially interested in research targeted on various states of knowledge evolution, such as (a) conflicts, (b) consolidation, (c) discovery, (d) paradigm shifts, and (e) breakthroughs. One crucial objective of better understanding these different states may be to study directly the underlying causes and dynamics needed to generate discoveries and breakthroughs. We will only be able to facilitate and possibly also generate such desirable situations if we can understand the process of how knowledge evolves. The process of how knowledge in a field grows and changes, crystallizes, and fractures are all areas of interest of this workshop. The same holds for related novel applied technologies, such as:
* Tools for tracking the progress of knowledge from latent ideas, through hypotheses to well-supported facts and/or claims;
* Methods for identifying what are the crucial fulcrum-points where a particular field may blossom or fail;
* Methodologies and supporting tools for identification and reinforcement of emerging promising trends in various academic and/or industrial domains;
* Platforms facilitating interconnection and cross-fertilization of related endeavors in isolated disciplines.

GOALS
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We would like to trigger a comprehensive and coherent approach to studying (and ultimately facilitating) the process of knowledge evolution by bringing together researchers and practitioners from the following fields:
* Data mining and knowledge discovery in dynamic resources.
* Ontology dynamics and versioning.
* Trend analysis (in multiple applications, including internet search, corpus evaluation, etc.).
* Natural Language Processing (evolution of terminology, language use, semantics).
* Knowledge Representation (temporal ontologies, temporal logics, belief revision, etc.)
* Discourse Analysis and Philosophy of Science (the definition and understanding of what particular phases of the knowledge evolution are, and how can we delimit, identify or even trigger them)
* Relevant application domains (such as Biomedical informatics, Neuroinformatics, and Biomedicine in general, but also domains like Internet Search, Business Analytics, Legal Studies or Digital Humanities)

We think that only after cross-fertilization of these different perspectives we can achieve a truly representative and coordinated research agenda covering all different facets of the knowledge evolution within specific, well-defined concrete examples from a wide variety of fields. The ultimate importance of such an effort lies, of course, in better understanding of what knowledge evolution actually is and how we can make the whole process more efficient in various application areas. Given both the potential impact of scientific discovery and the difficulties inherent in understanding how to create it, we feel that focusing on the topic of knowledge evolution is much desired and could conceivably encourage identification and tackling of grand challenges in the area of scientific discovery.

Ideally, we would like to see the practitioners and researchers actively network and collaborate in order to define and understand the most relevant and important lines of research pertinent to the underlying goal of understanding and enabling the processes of discovery, paradigm shift and breakthrough. This is going to be achieved by active engagement of the workshop organisers, authors and participants beyond mere paper presentation and discussion sessions. Before the workshop itself, we will identify a set of general grand challenges, partly based on the submissions received. These will serve as a guideline for an interactive discussion session that will be a part of the workshop agenda. The interactive session is supposed to wrap up the workshop with a concrete list of research questions and use cases most pertinent to knowledge evolution and ontology dynamics, accompanied with a tentative plan of related collaborative research and application development efforts.

TOPICS
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The topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following categories and their sub-domains.

Foundations of Knowledge Evolution:
* Philosophical and epistemological aspects of evolving knowledge
* Evolving knowledge as a complex system
* Models and ontologies for knowledge evolution
* Models and ontologies for change management
* Requirements for knowledge and ontology evolution
* Case studies in knowledge and ontology evolution
Temporal Aspects of Knowledge Capture:
* Dynamic ontology learning
* Ontology-based data mining
* Ontology evolution and versioning
* Hypothesis and claim extraction
* Information retrieval and extraction for detecting paradigm shifts
Representation of and Reasoning with Evolving Knowledge:
* Time representation
* Formal aspects of ontology dynamics
* Belief revision for ontologies
* Ontology language extensions
* Semantic evolution and discovery
* Temporal reasoning
* Provenance
* Reasoning for trend analysis
* Reasoning for knowledge shift detection
Knowledge Integration and Analysis Over Time:
* Time-aware ontology alignment
* Time-aware data integration
* Change propagation in dynamic ontologies
* Similarity metrics for evolving knowledge
* Detecting, managing and reconciling conflicting knowledge
Visualization and Presentation of Evolving Knowledge:
* Querying for evolving knowledge
* Browsing evolving knowledge
* Visualising trends, changes and paradigm shifts
* Visual summarization of knowledge sub-domains
* User interfaces for evolving knowledge presentation
Possible Application Domains:
* Genetics / Molecular Biology
* Clinical Science
* Biomedical informatics
* Neuroscience / Neuroinformatics
* Business analytics
* Legal studies
* Discourse analysis
* Digital humanities
We especially encourage submissions that integrally cover multiple above-mentioned topics.

SUBMISSIONS
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We accept two types of submissions:
* Full papers - up to 16 pages
* Position papers - up to 8 pages

All submissions should be submitted in PDF format, via EasyChair at:
* http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=evodyn2011

Submissions should be formatted according to the LNCS Springer format
(http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0). The
workshop proceedings will both be uploaded to CEUR (http://ceur-ws.org/)
and placed on electronic media for distribution at the conference.

DATES
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August 15, 2011: Submission of papers
September 12, 2011: Notification of acceptance/rejection
September 26, 2011: Camera ready paper submissions

COMMITTEES
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Organising Committee

* Vit Novacek, DERI (Digital Enterprise Research Institute), National University of Ireland Galway
* Zhisheng Huang, Division of Mathematics and Computer Science, Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam
* Tudor Groza, School of ITEE, The University of Queensland

Steering Committee

* Grigoris Antoniou, Institute of Computer Science, FORTH
* Mathieu d'Aquin, Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University
* Gully Burns, Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California
* Giorgos Flouris, Institute of Computer Science, FORTH
* Carole Goble, Information Management Group, Manchester University
* Jeff Z. Pan, Department of Computing Science, University of Aberdeen
* Dimitris Plexousakis, Institute of Computer Science, FORTH

Program Committee

* Grigoris Antoniou, FORTH, Greece
* Alessandro Artale, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
* Mathieu d?Aquin, The Open University, UK
* Paul Buitelaar, DERI Galway, Ireland
* Vinay Chaudhri, SRI International, US
* Tim Clark, MGH, Harvard University, US
* Pascal Hitzler, Wright State University, US
* Ed Hovy, ISI, University of Southern California, US
* Armin Haller, CSIRO ICT Canberra, Australia
* Zhisheng Huang, Vrije Univesiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
* Michael Lawley, CSIRO, Australia
* Thomas Meyer, Meraka Institute, South Africa
* Enrico Motta, Open University, UK
* Jeff Z. Pan, University of Aberdeen, UK
* Dimitris Plexousakis, FORTH, Greece
* Livia Predoiu, University of Magdeburg, Germany
* Cartic Ramakrishnan, ISI, University of Southern California, US
* Dietrich Rebholz-Schuhmann, EBI, UK
* Andrey Rzhetsky, University of Chicago, US
* Agnes Sandor, Xerox Research Centre Europe, France
* Kavitha Srinivas, IBM, US
* Johanna Voelker, University of Karlsruhe, Germany
* Kewen Wang, Griffith University, Australia
* Renata Wassermann, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brasil