eswc 2012 - 9th Extended Semantic Web Conference

The mission of ESWC is to bring together researchers and practitioners dealing with different aspects of semantic technologies. Building on its past success, ESWC is seeking to broaden its focus to span other relevant research areas in which semantics in a Web context plays an important role. The goal of the Semantic Web is to create a Web of knowledge and services in which the semantics of content is made explicit and content is linked to both other content and services. This network of knowledge-based functionality will weave together a large network of human knowledge, and make this knowledge machine-processable to support intelligent behaviour by machines. It will support novel applications allowing to combine content from heterogeneous sites in unforeseen ways and support enhanced matching between users needs and content.
Creating such an interlinked Web of knowledge which spans unstructured, RDF as well as multimedia content and services requires the collaboration of many disciplines, including but not limited to: Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, Database and Information Systems, Information Retrieval, Machine Learning, Multimedia, Distributed Systems, Social Networks, Web Engineering, and Web Science.
In addition to the research and in-use tracks, we have furthermore introduced two special tracks this year, putting particular emphasis on inter-disciplinary research topics and areas that show the potential of exciting synergies for the future.
Important Dates

Abstract submission December 5th, 2011
Full-paper submission December 12th, 2011
Notification of acceptance/rejection February 22nd, 2012
Camera-ready papers March 9th, 2012
Additional Information

ESWC2012 welcomes the submission of original research and application papers dealing with all aspects of representing and using semantics on the Web. We encourage theoretical, methodological, empirical, and applications papers. The proceedings of this conference will be published in Springer's Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. Paper submission and reviewing for ESWC2012 will be electronic via the conference submissions site. Each paper must be assigned to one of the tracks below.
Papers should not exceed fifteen (15) pages in length and must be formatted according to the information for LNCS authors. Papers must be submitted in PDF (Adobe's Portable Document Format) format and will not be accepted in any other format. Papers that exceed 15 pages or do not follow the LNCS guidelines risk being rejected automatically without a review. Authors of accepted papers will be required to provide semantic annotations for the abstract of their submission - details of this process will be provided on the conference Web page at the time of acceptance. At least one author of each accepted paper must register for the conference. More information about the Springer's Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) are available on the Springer LNCS Web site.
Submission will be through the Easychair system: https://www.easychair.org/account/signin.cgi?conf=...
Call for Papers ESWC 2012 Tracks

In-Use Tracks

Semantic Web In-Use
Chairs: Yves Raimond, BBC, United Kingdom-UK
Philippe Cudre-Mauroux, eXascale Infolab, University of Fribourg, Switzerland-CH
Research Tracks

Ontologies
Chairs: Dimitris Plexousakis, Foundation for Research and Technology ? Hellas, Greece-GR
Chiara Ghidini, Bruno Kessler Foundation, Italy-IT
Reasoning
Chairs: Giovambattista Ianni, Universitá della Calabria, Italy-IT
Markus Krötzsch, University of Oxford, United Kingdom-UK
Semantic Data Management
Chairs: Claudio Gutierrez, Universidad de Chile, Chile-CL
Andreas Harth, KIT, Germany-DE
Social Web and Web Science
Chairs: Matthew Rowe, KMI, Open University, United Kingdom-UK
Fabien Gandon, INRIA Sophia-Antipolis, France-FR
Linked Data
Chairs: Juan Sequeda, The University of Texas at Austin, United States-US
Sören Auer, Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany-DE
Processes, Services and Cloud Computing
Chairs: Matthias Klusch, DFKI, Germany-DE
Carlos Pedrinaci, Open University, United Kingdom-UK
Natural Language Processing
Chairs: Johanna Voelker, University of Mannheim, Germany-DE
Paul Buitelaar, DERI, National University of Ireland, Ireland-IE
Sensor and Mobile Web
Chairs: Kerry Taylor, CSIRO ICT Centre, Australia-AU
Alasdair J G Gray, University of Manchester, United Kingdom-UK
Machine Learning
Chairs: Volker Tresp, Siemens, Germany-DE
Claudia d´Amato, University of Bari, Italy-IT
Special Tracks

Digital Libraries and Cultural Heritage Track
Chairs: Antoine Isaac, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands-NL
Vivien Petras, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany-DE
EGovernment: Using Semantics for Promoting Interoperability in the Public Sector
Chairs: Vassilios Peristeras, European Commission,
Asunción Gomez-Perez, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain-ES

In-Use Track:
Semantic Web In-Use

Semantic technologies are transversal technologies, and hence can be applied to a wide range of domains ranging from eGovernment to manufacturing. Demonstrating the beneficial use of semantic technologies in those domains is a major challenge. The Semantic Web In-Use track is devoted to showcase implemented applications, learned best practices as well as assessments and evaluations of semantic techniques in the enterprise and in real world deployments. Domains of interest include, but are not limited to:

Best practices and lessons learnt for the Semantic Web
Implementation issues for Semantic Web systems
Using Linked Data in the enterprise
Analyses and evaluations of Semantic Web technologies
Semantics for enterprise applications
Experiences in deploying Semantic Web technologies
Semantic Web in new application domains, including: eGovernment, eEnvironment, eMobility and smart cities, eHealth, Life Sciences, Sensor networks, Media and entertainment, Telecommunications, Cultural heritage, Financial services, Energy and utilities, Manufacturing, Digital libraries, Cloud applications, Personal Information Management, etc.
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Research Track:
Ontologies

Ontologies, and related formal representations of conceptual knowledge, represent a core part of the research since the early days of the Semantic Web, as they provide the basis for the description of Web resources, data and knowledge that can be more effectively and intelligently exploited by humans and applications. This track is intended to showcase new developments and innovative techniques for building, maintaining, reasoning with and evaluating ontologies in the context of the Semantic Web, as well as novel applications exploiting ontologies in challenging settings, including the open Web. In particular we invite contributions that will advance the state of the art in:

Languages, tools, and methodologies for ontology engineering
Ontology learning
(Collaborative) Ontology Engineering
Ontology matching, alignment and merging
Ontology Evolution
Ontology repositories and ontology search
Ontology-based data integration
Knowledge acquisition
Design patterns
Ontology management, maintenance and reuse
Ontology quality and evaluation
Ontology-based applications
Ontologies for specific domains
Ontology-based information retrieval
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Research Track:
Reasoning

Reasoning comprises all methods and technologies that are used to draw conclusions based on the semantics of ontologies and data. As such it is vital for evaluating semantic information in applications and it provides important support to ontology engineers during modeling. The ESWC 2012 Reasoning Track welcomes original contributions on all aspects of reasoning that pertain to semantic technologies. This includes submissions with strong relations to other tracks given that reasoning plays a key role. The range of topics of interest includes, but is not limited to, the following:

Scalable and lightweight reasoning
Coping with errors and inconsistencies
Reasoning under uncertainty
Data-intensive reasoning and reasoning in semantic data stores
Datalog and declarative rule-based reasoning
Production rules and operational rule-based reasoning
Description logics and DL-based OWL reasoning
RDF, RDFS and RDF-based OWL reasoning
Distributed and parallel reasoning
Approximate and incomplete reasoning techniques
Nonmonotonic semantics, commonsense reasoning, and hybrid approaches
Non-standard semantics and reasoning tasks
Implementation and system evaluation
Applications of reasoning
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Research Track:
Semantic Data Management

In the last years there has been a tremendous increase in the amount of semantic data (SD) available on the Web. The ability to understand, manage and query the SD is of paramount importance. SD management refers to a range of techniques that can be employed for storing, querying, manipulating and integrating data based on meaning.

Semantic repositories and databases
Query processing of semantic data
Semantic access to legacy data
Management of spatial, temporal semantics
Virtualized semantic stores and scalability
Exploratory semantic searching and browsing
Security and privacy
Traceability and trustworthiness
Benchmarking
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Research Track:
Social Web and Web Science

The widespread uptake of social functionality by web applications has lead to the creation of masses of social data, however such data is often provided using platform-dependent schemas and vocabularies, thereby limiting automated reuse. Enrichment of such data with common semantics would overcome such limitations and enable machine-readability and interpretation. Realising this goal requires research, not only into the semantic description of social data, but also to provide evidence of its utility, for example through intelligent behaviour analysis, user profiling and community analysis. To this end we invite submissions of state of the art work within, but not entirely limited to, the following topic areas:

Schemas/ontologies for social data and reconciling social semantics with format semantics
Semantic enrichment of the Social Web (RDFa, microdata) and Linked Data on the Social Web
Querying, mining and analysis of social semantic data and dynamics
Semantic network and community analysis and supporting community lifecycles
Social Semantics in micro (user profiles, behaviours, messages, etc.) and macro (social constructs, metrics, etc.) levels
Semantics in mobile social networks and mobile access to social data on the web
Web users as virtual and physical sensors, crawlers, etc. for a ubiquitous social semantic web
Social Semantic Web and the Internet of Things and reality augmented by the social semantic web
Semantically-enabled social platforms and applications: wikis, forums, portals, blogs and microblogs, etc
Reasoning and personalization based on semantics: recommendations, social navigation, collaborative search, social filtering, etc.
Privacy, policy and access control on Social Semantic Web
Provenance, reputation and trust on Social Semantic Web
Semantics for Human-based computation and vice-versa
Socialized semantic web applications: shared semantic desktop, collaborative knowledge creation, semantic bookmarking, etc.
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Research Track:
Linked Data

The Linked Data paradigm is meanwhile established as a pragmatic approach for supporting the realization of the Semantic Web vision and providing a fertile soil for integrating a variety of research directions and usage scenarios. For managing the life-cycle of Linked Data on the Web, the stages of extraction, storage, revision, enrichment, repair, quality analysis and consumption of linked Web Data are of particular importance. Consequently, we invite papers to be submitted to this track which advance the state of the art in particular in:

Linked Data publication
Entity resolution and interlinking
Managing the storage and publication of data, interlinks, and embedded LOD
Linked data and metadata integration/fusion/consolidation
Dataset curation
Linked Data consumption
Linked data applications (e.g., open government data, linked enterprise data)
Searching, querying, analyzing, and mining linked data
Reasoning with LD
Dataset description and discovery
User interfaces and user/social interactions for LD
Architecture and infrastructure
Provenance, privacy, and rights management
Assessing data quality and data trustworthiness
Dataset dynamics
Crawling
Scalability in the linked data cloud.
Federated querying
Caching
Update propagation
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Research Track:
Processes, Services and Cloud Computing

The use of service-oriented technologies for business process management and the offering of IT services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) by providers of public, private or federated clouds for scalable business applications in the Internet of Services is gaining momentum within industry and academia alike. Web APIs, linked data and linked services on the Web become increasingly available for numerous application domains. This track is concerned with latest advances in semantic technologies that are suitable to address the challenges and opportunities raised. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

Semantic description of business services and processes
Semantics for service governance and sciences
Linked data services coordination and tools
Semantic services for cloud management and interoperability
Trusted, privacy preserving and secure semantic cloud services and processes
Semantic service discovery and selection
Semantic service composition
Semantics for ad-hoc data, service and process mashups
Semantics for service negotiation
Scalable automation of the service life cycle
Case studies of semantic business service applications
Semantics and services for the 3D Web
Semantics for mobile services coordination

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Research Track:
Natural Language Processing

Although knowledge processing on the Semantic Web is inherently language-independent, human interaction with semantically structured and linked data will remain inherently language-based as this will still be done preferably by use of natural language input. The interface between natural language on the one hand and semantically structured data and knowledge on the other is therefore a major topic of Semantic Web research, which can be observed also by a general increase of NLP-related topics that are of relevance to this community. In particular we invite contributions that will advance the state of the art in:

Multilinguality and the Semantic Web / Web of Data
Natural language generation in a Semantic Web context
Natural language interfaces for Semantic Web applications
NLP for ontology matching, merging, alignment
Ontology learning and knowledge acquisition from text
NLP for Linked Data generation and use
Question answering on the Semantic Web / Web of Data
Use of ontologies / Linked Data in NLP
Ontology-based text classification and clustering
The ontology-lexicon interface
Ontology localisation
NLP for semantic search

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Research Track:
Sensor and Mobile Web

The correct interpretation and analysis of the raw numerical values provided by pervasive sensor networks and mobile devices now featuring several sensors requires proper semantics support and contextual knowledge. This will enable better data representation, integration, and use, and further aids in coping with the inherently unreliable nature of the observations provided by sensor networks and mobile devices, affected by sensor noise, faults, and resource constraints. In this track we invite approaches dealing with combining sensor networks and/or mobile devices and semantic technologies for the purpose of management, interpretation and analysis of the observed environment, users' movements, activities, or social interactions. Contributions are expected to cover a wide range of related topics such as (a) identification of simple events or event streams by joining sensor data with background knowledge, (b) identification of complex events composed from several atomic sensed events based on background knowledge, (c) filtering, management, and interpretation of sensor and mobile data using contextual models, (d) creation of actuators and applications based on sensor data and background knowledge. We invite high-quality submissions related to (but not limited to) one or more of the following topics:

Architectures and middleware for the semantic sensor and mobile web
Context- and location-aware applications based on semantic technologies
Data models and querying solutions for the semantic sensor and mobile web
In-network data processing and filtering techniques based on locality, contextual and semantic knowledge
Linked data and mashups on the sensor and mobile web
Ontologies and rules for semantic sensor and mobile web
Use cases and applications demonstrating the use of semantic technologies for sensor and mobile web
Provenance of semantic data on the sensor and mobile web
Scalability and performance of semantic technologies on sensor and mobile web
Semantic data integration and fusion of heterogeneous sensor network data streams
Semantic interpretation of mobile sensor streams and moving objects
Semantic-based security, privacy and trust in mobile devices and applications
Spatio-temporal aspects of semantic sensor networks
Visualization and user interfaces for semantic sensor and mobile web
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Research Track:
Machine Learning

With the growing availability of Semantic Web Data, machine learning approaches ---in particular inductive learning methods--- are increasing in relevance. The prospect is that innovative approaches for (semi-) automatically building and enriching ontologies from information sources such as Linked Data, tagged data, social networks, and ontologies will increasingly support Semantic Web applications. Furthermore, inductive incremental learning techniques can perform reasoning at large scale beyond the limitations of deductive approaches. Finally, machine learning can deal with the intrinsic uncertainty in Web data containing incomplete and/or contradictory information. We invite high quality contributions from all areas of research that address the emerging data challenges.

Extraction and augmentation of ontological knowledge from (linked) data using statistical and inductive methods
Statistical machine learning in Linked Data
Inductive methods for ontology construction
Machine learning for ontology matching, instance matching, search and retrieval
Link prediction and recommendation engines
Machine learning method for handling uncertain knowledge
Approximate inductive reasoning on ontologies
Semi-supervised and unbalanced learning for approximate concept retrieval, query answering
Data mining and knowledge discovery in Linked data and ontologies
OWA vs. CWA in learning
Evaluation of machine learning methods in the SW context
Ontology mining (concept change and novelty detection for ontology evolution, inductive aggregation etc.)
Inductive Logic Programming approaches
Deep learning for ontology learning and ontology refinement
Machine learning methods for Semantic Web mining (social network analysis, link prediction, ranking methods, kernels for the Semantic Web and for and Linked Data, etc. )
Instance-based learning for structured representations
Relational learning and Markov logic
Machine learning applications
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Special Track:
Digital Libraries and Cultural Heritage Track

Digital Libraries (DL) are fast becoming significant resources for the world’s knowledge. This is especially true in the Cultural Heritage (CH) sector, e.g., in Libraries, Archives and Museums, where large bodies of digital documents and metadata are being assembled and re-distributed through initiatives like Europeana.eu. But even though a lot content is already accessible via the visible Web, much more could be exploited, and better exploited using Semantic Web technology. Often, Digital Libraries focus on particular disciplinary and subject areas and constitute curated knowledge. Semantic Web techniques for digital libraries will therefore take advantage of much richer assumptions on domain-specific semantics, consistency and quality of content. Linked Data technology also offers unprecedented opportunities for data sharing and re-using, within the cultural domain itself, and across a wider range of sectors. Particular topics of relevance are:

DL/CH requirements for semantic technologies
Core ontologies and community-specific extensions, application profiles
Adequacy of metadata, schemata and ontologies to applications (e.g., answering research questions)
Deductions from complex data paths in semantic metadata relationships, such as detecting co-author clusters
Inferences between collection-level and item-level metadata ? from wholes to parts and vice-versa
Querying of an ‘Open World’ of incomplete metadata
Metadata transformation and enrichment
Metadata integration and sharing
Authenticity, digital provenance and digital rights management, long-term preservation
Automatic or manual community-driven detection of co-reference to people, places, events, things
Applications of Linked Data in Libraries, Archives, Museums
Methodological contributions: best practices/lessons learnt for applying SW / Linked Data to large DLs
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Special Track:
EGovernment: Using Semantics for Promoting Interoperability in the Public Sector

Public administration is considered the heaviest service industry as well as the most important information provider even in countries with relatively small public sectors. It is also a highly distributed "business", with hundreds or even thousands of different entities providing services and data to other public agencies, businesses and citizens. In this environment, promoting interoperability amongst all these various actors is considered vital for improving responsiveness, efficiency and reducing costs. The European Interoperability Framework introduced four layers of interoperability, technical, semantic, organizational and legal. With the current advancement and the availability of off-the-shelf solutions for addressing technical interoperability issues, the focus has been shifted to semantic interoperability, a layer that has recently received much attention by both researchers and practitioners. The special track focuses on contributions related to this specific interoperability layer. An indicative list of topics follows below:

Definitions, models and theory on semantic interoperability for eGovernment systems
Requirements, and challenges for semantic interoperability in eGovernment
Metadata standards, ontologies and vocabularies for eGovernment
Examples and experiences from national, regional, local projects and strategies to promote semantic interoperability
Linked Open Government Data
Semantic SOAs for eGovernment
Semantics and Social Software for eGovernment
Government 2.0 and semantics
Semantics in eParticipation and eConsultation
Interoperability maturity models and approaches
All information on the ESWC conference series and past conferences can be found at http://2012.eswc-conferences.org.