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CALL FOR PAPERS

Rule Representation, Interchange and Reasoning in Distributed,
Heterogeneous Environments

Special Issue of IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering

Guest Editors: N. Bassiliades, G. Governatori, A. Paschke, J. Dix
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In recent years rule based technologies have enjoyed remarkable adoption in
two areas: (1) Business Rule Processing and (2) Web-Centered Reasoning. The
first trend is caused by the software development life cycle, which needs
to be accelerated at reduced cost. The second trend is related to the
Semantic Web and Service-oriented technologies, which aim to turn the Web
into a huge repository of cross-referenced, machine-understandable data and
processes. For both trends, rules can be used to extract, derive,
transform, and integrate information in a platform-independent manner.
While early rule engines and environments were complex, expensive to
maintain, and not very user friendly, the current generation of rule
technology provides enhanced usability, scalability and performance, and is
less costly. A general advantage of using rules is that they are usually
represented in a platform independent manner, often using XML. This fits
well into today’s distributed, heterogeneous Web-based system environments.
Rules represented in standardized Web formats can be discovered,
interchanged and invoked at runtime within and across Web systems, and can
be interpreted and executed on any platform.

This special issue solicits state-of-the-art approaches, solutions and
applications in the area of Rule Representation, Reasoning and Interchange
in the context of distributed, (partially) open, heterogeneous
environments, such as the Semantic Web, Intelligent Multi-Agent Systems,
Event-Driven Architectures and Service-Oriented Computing. We strongly
advise that solicited contributions should clearly identify the target
class of applications they enable.


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Topics
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Original contributions, not currently under review or accepted by another
journal, are solicited in relevant areas including (but not limited to) the
following:

- Rule Representation and Languages
* Rule languages for exchanging and processing information through the
web
* Representation and meta-annotation of rules and rule sets for
publication and interchange
* Event-driven/action rule languages and models
* Rule-based event processing languages and rule-based complex event
processing
* Modeling of executable rule specifications and tool support
* Natural-language processing of rules
* Graphical processing, modeling and rendering of rules
* Rules in web 2.0, web 3.0, semantic web technologies and web
intelligence research
- Reasoning and Rule Engines
* Execution models, rule engines, and environments
* Rule-based (multi-valued) reasoning with and representing uncertain
and fuzzy information
* Rule-based reasoning with non-monotonic negation, modalities, deontic,
temporal, priority, scoped or other rule qualifications
* Rule-based default reasoning with default logic, defeasible logic, and
answer set programming
* Compilation vs. interpretation approaches of rules
* Hybrid rule systems
- Rule Interchange and Integration
* Interchange and refactoring of rule bases in heterogeneous execution
environments
* Rule-based agility and its role in middleware
* Communication between rule based systems using interchange formats and
processing / communication middleware
* Information integration of external data and domain knowledge into rules
* Homogeneous and heterogeneous integration of rules and ontologies
* Extraction and reengineering of platform-independent, interchangeable
rules and rule models from existing platform-specific resources
* Rule interchange standards and related industry interchange formats
* Incorporation of rule technology into distributed enterprise
application architectures
* Interoperation between different rule formats and ontological domain
conceptualization
* Translation of interchangeable and domain-independent rule formats and
rule models into executable technical rule specifications
- Rule Engineering and Repositories
* Verification and validation of interchanged rule bases in
heterogeneous execution environments
* Practical solutions tackling the real-world software engineering
requirements of rule-based systems in open, distributed environments
* Collaborative authoring, modeling and engineering of rule
specifications and rule repositories
* Management and maintenance of distributed rule bases and rule
repositories during their lifecycle
- Web Rule Applications
* Applications and integration of rules in web standards
* Applications of rules in the semantic web and pragmatic web
* Applications based on (semantic) web rule standardization or
standards-proposing efforts
* Applications of rules in e.g. legal reasoning, compliance rules,
security, government, security, risk management, trust and proof
reasoning, etc.
* E-contracting and automated negotiations with rule-based declarative
strategies
* Specification, execution and management of rule-based policies and
electronic contracts
* Rule-based software agents and (web) services
* Theoretical and/or empirical evaluation of rule-based system
performance and scalability


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Submission Guidelines
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Prospective authors should prepare manuscripts according to the Information
for Authors as published in recent issues of the journal or at
http://www.computer.org/tkde/. Note that mandatory over-length page charges
and color charges will apply.
Manuscripts should be submitted through the online IEEE manuscript
submission system at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cs-ieee.
Updated information of this call can be found at
http://lpis.csd.auth.gr/publications/tkde-si/.


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Schedule
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Deadline for paper submission: March 15, 2009 (EXTENDED)
Completion of first review: June 19, 2009
Minor/Major revision due: August 21, 2009
Final decision notification: November 6, 2009
Publication materials due: December 4, 2009
Publication date (tentative): July 2010


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Guest Editors
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Nick Bassiliades, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
nbassili AT csd.auth.gr

Guido Governatori, NICTA, Australia
guido.governatori AT nicta.com.au

Adrian Paschke, Free University Berlin, Germany
paschke AT inf.fu-berlin.de

Jurgen Dix, Clausthal University of Technology, Germany
dix AT tu-clausthal.de