7th International Workshop on Uncertainty Reasoning for the Semantic Web
http://c4i.gmu.edu/ursw/2011

In conjunction with the 10th International Semantic Web Conference

Bonn, Germany
October 23-27, 2011


You are invited to participate in the upcoming workshop on Uncertainty Reasoning for the Semantic Web (URSW), to be held as part of the 10th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) in October of 2011 at the Hotel Maritim Bonn, Germany.

ISWC is a major international forum for presenting visionary research on all aspects of the Semantic Web. The Uncertainty Reasoning Workshop is an exciting opportunity for collaboration and cross-fertilization between the uncertainty reasoning community and the Semantic Web community.

Effective methods for reasoning under uncertainty are vital for realizing many aspects of the Semantic Web vision, but the ability of current-generation web technology to handle uncertainty is extremely limited. Recently, there has been a groundswell of demand for uncertainty reasoning technology among Semantic Web researchers and developers.

This surge of interest creates a unique opening to bring together two communities with a clear commonality of interest but little history of interaction. By capitalizing on this opportunity, URSW could spark dramatic progress toward realizing the Semantic Web vision.


AUDIENCE

The intended audience for this workshop includes the following

* Researchers in uncertainty reasoning technologies with interest in Semantic Web and Web-related technologies;
* Semantic web developers and researchers;
* People in the knowledge representation community with interest in the Semantic Web.
* Ontology researchers and ontological engineers;
* Web services researchers and developers with interest in the Semantic Web;
* Developers of tools designed to support semantic web implementation, e.g., Jena developers, Protégé developers, OWL-API developers.


TOPIC LIST

We intend to have an open discussion on any topic relevant to the general subject of uncertainty in the Semantic Web (including fuzzy theory, probability theory, and other approaches). Therefore, the following list should be just an initial guide.

* Syntax and semantics for extensions to Semantic Web languages to enable representation of uncertainty;
* Logical formalisms to support uncertainty in Semantic Web languages;
* Probability theory as a means of assessing the likelihood that terms in different ontologies refer to the same or similar concepts;
* Architectures for applying plausible reasoning to the problem of ontology mapping;
* Using fuzzy approaches to deal with imprecise concepts within ontologies;
* The concept of a probabilistic ontology and its relevance to the Semantic Web;
* Best practices for representing uncertain, incomplete, ambiguous, or controversial information in the Semantic Web;
* The role of uncertainty as it relates to Web services;
* Interface protocols with support for uncertainty as a means to improve interoperability among Web services;
* Uncertainty reasoning techniques applied to trust issues in the Semantic Web;
* Existing implementations of uncertainty reasoning tools in the context of the Semantic Web;
* Issues and techniques for integrating tools for representing and reasoning with uncertainty;
* The future of uncertainty reasoning for the Semantic Web.


IMPORTANT DATES

August 18 Paper submissions due

August 31 Paper acceptance notification

September 5 Camera-ready papers due

October 17 Presentations due

October 23 7th Workshop on Uncertainty Reasoning for the Semantic Web


SUBMISSION DETAILS

The URSW will be accepting submissions of technical papers and position papers. Each submission will be evaluated for acceptability by at least three members of the Program Committee. Decisions about acceptance will be based on relevance to the above topic list, originality, potential significance, topicality and clarity. Since all accepted papers will be presented at the workshop, we require that at least one of the submitting authors must be a registered participant at the ISWC 2011 Conference, and committed to attend the URSW Workshop.

Submissions to the Workshop are only accepted in electronic format and should be sent via the workshop’s submission site: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ursw2011. Papers must be formatted in the style of the Springer Publications format for Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS). This is the very same format adopted by the ISWC 2011. For complete details, see Springer’s Author Instructions (http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0).

Technical papers submitted to the URSW Workshop must not exceed 12 pages, including figures. Submissions exceeding this limit will not be reviewed.

Position papers consist of a summary of ideas, projects, or any research efforts that are relevant to the URSW Workshop and must not exceed 4 pages.

Following the general acceptance rules of the ISWC 2011 conference, papers that, at the time of submission, are under review for or have already been published in or accepted for publication in a journal or another conference will not be accepted to the URSW workshop.


PRESENTATION AND PUBLICATION

URSW 2011 will be a full-day workshop divided into 4 sessions. The first session will start with the workshop's keynote presentation, which will be followed by technical paper presentations. Sessions two and three will be devoted to presenting our selected technical and position papers, while the remaining session will be planned in a format that invites an open debate on the results, conclusions, recommendations, and follow-up work of the URW3-XG group. We plan to convey a work meeting after the workshop, if the last session needs to be extended.

All papers accepted to the URSW will be presented during the workshop and published in the workshop proceedings, which will be available as a separate publication after the Conference. Authors of accepted technical papers will have 20 minutes to present their work, while authors of accepted position papers will have a 10-minute slot to share their ideas. After each presentation, 5 minutes will be allocated to questions from the audience. Both technical and position papers will be published in the URSW Workshop proceedings, to be available after the ISWC 2011 Conference.

In addition, technical papers accepted for presentation at the URSW 2011 will be eligible for participating in an international journal special issue or in a post-proceedings book.


ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

The organizing committee is as follows (in alphabetical order):

* Fernando Bobillo - University of Zaragoza, Spain
* Rommel N. Carvalho - George Mason University, USA
* Paulo C. G. Costa - George Mason University, USA
* Claudia d'Amato - University of Bari, Italy
* Nicola Fanizzi - University of Bari, Italy
* Kathryn Laskey - George Mason University, USA
* Ken Laskey – MITRE Corporation, USA
* Thomas Lukasiewicz - Oxford University, UK
* Trevor Martin - University of Bristol, UK
* Matthias Nickles - Technical University of Munich, Germany
* Michael Pool - Convera, Inc., USA


PROGRAM COMMITTEE

The confirmed members of the program committee are the following (in alphabetical order):

* Fernando Bobillo - Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain
* Silvia Calegari - University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy
* Rommel N. Carvalho - George Mason University, USA
* Paulo C. G. Costa - George Mason University, USA
* Fabio G. Cozman - Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil
* Claudia D'Amato - University of Bari, Italy
* Nicola Fanizzi - University of Bari, Italy
* Marcelo Ladeira - University of Brasilia, Brazil
* Kathryn B. Laskey - George Mason University, USA
* Kenneth J. Laskey - MITRE Corporation, USA
* Thomas Lukasiewicz - Oxford University, UK
* Trevor Martin - University of Bristol, UK
* Matthias Nickles - University of Bath, UK
* Jeff Z. Pan - University of Aberdeen, UK
* Rafael Peñaloza, Technical University Dresden, Germany
* Michael Pool - Convera, Inc., USA
* Livia Predoiu - Universität Mannheim, Germany
* Célia Ralha - University of Brasilia, Brazil
* David Robertson - University of Edinburgh, UK
* Daniel Sánchez - European Centre for Soft Computing, Spain
* Thomas Scharrenbach - Swiss Federal Institute WSL, Switzerland
* Sergej Sizov - University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany
* Giorgos Stoilos - Oxford University, UK
* Umberto Straccia – ISTI-CNR, Pisa, Italy
* Andreas Tolk - Old Dominion University, USA
* Peter Vojtas – Charles University, Czech Republic

We are looking forward to seeing you in Bonn!