The 2nd International workshop on Ontologies and Information Systems for the Semantic Web (ONISW 2008)

[ Scope and Topics | Submission Procedures | Important Dates | Organizers | Program Committee ]

Description and Scope of Topics:

The emergence of the World Wide Web made massive amounts of data available. Data exists in many scattered electronic data sources (e-sources) over the Web. Even though some of the data is in well-organized data sources, interoperability and integration with data from other sources, semantic coordination and conflict resolution are required for its full exploitation. Semantic Web enabled applications can potentially produce better results for semantic integration, interoperability and search. In particular, ontologies are widely regarded as the best solution to global information integration and semantic interoperability.

A crucial question is whether ontologies can replace information models. But whereas ontologies work quite well as virtual schemata in mediation systems, they may perform poorly as information models and on the user interface level. On the theoretical side, there is a lack of understanding of the effective relation and interplay of ontological and epistemological features in information models and systems. Furthermore there are still open questions concerning good scientific practice in developing ontologies. On the practical side, there is still a lack of good practice of how to integrate existing information systems into ontology driven applications and few experiences at all with creating good new data structures from ontologies directly for interoperation in complex and diverse application environments.

The main objective of the workshop is to bring together researchers in Information Management interested in the relation between ontology and information models, to present results and to discuss theoretical aspects and good practice. Among the issues are:

  1. What is the difference and relation between information models and ontologies? Which criteria must ontologies match in order to provide a sound basis for an information system? How to interact and relate the ways of knowing and what can be known with the form of knowledge in information systems? Are there systematic kinds of information elements associated with information management processes that are not of ontological nature? What is the epistemological impact on ontologies?

  2. How should we construct ontologies from information models for semantic interoperability, and create and manage mapping specifications for mediators, data transformation systems, Web service wrappers via ontologies. What are the characteristic cases of heterogeneity and how can they be managed generically. What are the languages and tools for mapping and transformation algorithm generators?

  3. How can we effectively enable domain experts to specify the semantics of their information systems in order to exploit Semantic Web technology? How can we visualize the ontology and mapping information in a user-friendly way?

  4. How can we make effective information models, i.e. database schemata, data entry forms, Web service interfaces, and simplified query interfaces from ontologies? Ontologies can help to objectively describe the loss of information and reasoning capabilities due to necessary simplifications in information structures. What are the problems, mechanisms, and rules in order to preserve semantic interoperability?

  5. How should we utilize ontologies and conceptual modelling for data management, integration and interoperability in Semantic web applications, particularly in e-science, life sciences, e-business and cultural applications? What are architectures and models of good practice? Are there domain-overarching global core ontologies? What are their characteristics?

  6. What is semantics? Are semantics logical formulae? Is ontological commitment a set of formulae or an interpretation function to real world things and phenomena in the user’s mind? What role does ontological commitment play in conceptual modelling and database integration?

Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit theoretical, technical and practical research contributions that directly or indirectly address the issues above. Particularly welcome are e-science, life-sciences, e-business and cultural applications. The workshop foresees a technical discussion on the relation of ontologies, conceptual modelling, and data management/integration for the Semantic Web.

Topics:

All workshop proceedings will be printed along with the CIKM proceedings by ACM. Thus, the timeline to print proceedings must strictly follow with the CIKM proceedings schedule.

The authors of the best papers will be invited to submit an extended and revised version of their work for publication in the Journal of Computing Science and Engineering.

Submission Procedures

Paper Presentation

All ONISW workshop papers will have various time slots to be presented in the Workshop: Posters (2-4 pages), Short papers (5 pages), Position papers (5 pages), and Regular papers (7-8 pages).

Important Dates (Firm deadlines)

Organizers

General Chair:
Ramez Elmasri, University of Texas at Arlington, USA (elmasri@cse.uta.edu)

Program Chairs:
Mathias Brochhausen, European Center of Ontological Research (ECOR), Institute of Formal Ontology (IFOMIS), Saarbrücken, Germany (mathias.brochhausen@ifomis.uni-saarland.de)

Martin Doerr, Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH) (martin@ics.forth.gr)

Hyoil Han, Drexel University, USA (hhan@ischool.drexel.edu)

Program Committee

Sofia Athenikos, Drexel University, USA
Protima Banerjee, Drexel University, USA
Stefania Costache, L3S Research Center, Germany
Alfredo Cuzzocrea, University of Calabria, Italy
Yihong Ding, Brigham Young University, USA
Vadim Ermolayev, Zaporozhye National University, Ukraine
Fabien Gandon, INRIA, France
Gerald Gannod, Miami University, USA
Raul Garcia-Castro, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain
Fabio Grandi, University of Bologna, Italy
Siegfried Handschuh, National University of Ireland / DERI, Ireland
Peter Haase, Institute AIFB, University of Karlsruhe, Germany
Kenji Hatano, Doshisha University, Japan
Ralf Heese, Freie Universitaet Berlin, Germany
Ramón Hermoso Traba, Rey Juan Carlos University, Spain
Stijn Heymans, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Uwe Keller, University of Innsbruck, Austria
Haklae Kim, National University of Ireland, Ireland
Arun Kumar, IBM India Research Lab., India
Steffen Lamparter, Institute AIFB, University of Karlsruhe, Germany
Sang-Goo Lee, Seoul National University, Korea
Yugyung Lee, University of Missouri at Kansas City, USA
Jiangang Ma, Victoria University, Australia
Yuxin Mao, Zhejiang University, China
Jun Miyazaki, Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan
JungHwan Oh, University of North Texas, USA
Feng Pan, Microsoft, USA
Fabio Porto, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland
Delip Rao, Johns Hopkins University, USA
Tarmo Robal, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia
Dumitru Roman, STI / University of Innsbruck, Austria
Melike Sah, University of Southampton, United Kingdom
Sangsoo Sung, Google Inc., USA
Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Wright State University, USA
Xian Wu, IBM China Research Lab., China
Suk-Chung Yoon, Widener University, USA
Lei Zhang, IBM China Research Lab, China


Contact Us

For further information on this Workshop, please contact program chairs (hhan@ischool.drexel.edu).