Preprint: Hidden Social Dynamics Behind Collaborative Ontology Engineering

A preprint of a new paper:

Markus Strohmaier, Simon Walk, Jan Pöschko, Daniel Lamprecht, Tania Tudorache, Csongor Nyulas, Mark A. Musen and Natalya F. Noy, How Ontologies Are Made: Studying The Hidden Social Dynamics Behind Collaborative Ontology Engineering Projects, Journal of Web Semantics, volume 20, in press, 2013.

is now available on the JWS prepreint server.

Abstract: Traditionally, evaluation methods in the field of semantic technologies have focused on the end result of ontology engineering efforts, mainly, on evaluating ontologies and their corresponding qualities and characteristics. This focus has led to the development of a whole arsenal of ontology-evaluation techniques that investigate the quality of ontologies as a product. In this paper, we aim to shed light on the process of ontology engineering construction by introducing and applying a set of measures to analyze hidden social dynamics.

We argue that especially for ontologies which are constructed collaboratively, understanding the social processes that have led to its construction is critical not only in understanding but consequently also in evaluating the ontology. With the work presented in this paper, we aim to expose the texture of collaborative ontology engineering processes that is otherwise left invisible. Using historical change-log data, we unveil qualitative differences and commonalities between different collaborative ontology engineering projects.

Explaining and understanding these differences will help us to better comprehend the role and importance of social factors in collaborative ontology engineering projects. We hope that our analysis will spur a new line of evaluation techniques that view ontologies not as the static result of deliberations among domain experts, but as a dynamic, collaborative and iterative process that needs to be understood, evaluated and managed in itself. We believe that advances in this direction would help our community to expand the existing arsenal of ontology evaluation techniques towards more holistic approaches.

cfp: Special Issue on Ontology-Based Data Access

Special Issue of the Journal of Web Semantics on Ontology-Based Data Access

The competitiveness of many enterprises today relies on exploiting the wealth of information that is available in various distributed data sources or services. Thus, the problem of integrating data coming from many distributed and heterogeneous data sources has been a hot research topic for many years, and has received the attention of researchers in Databases, Knowledge Representation, and the Semantic Web. Furthermore, the recent utilization of “big data” in the private sector, government, and science has not only reinforced the importance of this topic but added the challenge of scaling to huge datasets.

The ontology-based data access (OBDA) paradigm was formulated a few years ago to tackle the problem of data integration, and more generally that of accessing data sources with a complex structure. The OBDA approach is based on three components: the data layer, the conceptual model of the application that is used for expressing user requests, and the mapping between the two. The data layer might consist of a single, possibly federated, database, or by a collection of possibly distributed and heterogeneous data sources (this case is also known as ontology-based data integration). The conceptual model is represented by an ontology, typically formalised in an appropriate description logic, and user requests are expressed as queries over the ontology. The mapping between the conceptual model and the data sources is formalized by mapping assertions, which are based on an appropriate logical language, but which may also incorporate extra-logical features for data manipulation.

The aim of an OBDA system is to answer user queries by transforming them into appropriate queries to the data layer, using the ontology and the mapping.
Traditionally, in OBDA, it has been assumed that data source(s) are relational, and that they are queried through SQL. However, the OBDA approach to data integration can also be used in the context of non-relational data sources e.g., XML, RDF etc. Given the recent proliferation of linked data sources and the importance of the linked paradigm for making data public, we expect to see a stronger convergence of work in these two areas.

Data exchange is another interesting paradigm closely related to OBDA. In data exchange, data that are organized according to one schema (called the source schema) need to be translated into an instance of a different schema (called the target schema), possibly equipped with constraints. The translation must respect certain dependencies that are again formalized as mappings among the two given schemas. While in OBDA the focus is on answering user queries over the conceptual model, in data exchange the aim is to understand how to materialize data in the target schema, respecting the mappings and the constraints, so as to answer queries directly using the materialized data.

This special issue will cover recent advances of the OBDA approach and its relation to other promising paradigms such as data exchange and linked data integration. Although we are interested in all aspects of the OBDA approach, including foundational work, we are also keen to attract papers that present and evaluate analytically and/or experimentally implemented OBDA systems, as well as papers that demonstrate the applicability of the OBDA paradigm to real-world situations.

Submission guidelines

The Journal of Web Semantics solicits original scientific contributions of high quality. Submission of your manuscript is welcome provided that it, or any translation of it, has not been copyrighted or published and is not being submitted for publication elsewhere. Upon acceptance of an article, the author(s) will be asked to transfer copyright of the article to the publisher. This transfer will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. Manuscripts should be prepared for publication in accordance with instructions given in the JWS Guide for Authors. The submission and review process will be carried out using Elsevier's Web-based EES system. Final decisions of accepted papers will be approved by an editor in chief.

Final copies of accepted publications will appear in print and at the archival online server. Author preprints of the articles will be made freely accessible on the preprint server of the journal.

Editors

• Diego Calvanese (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano)
• Manolis Koubarakis (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens)
• David Toman (University of Waterloo)

Important dates

• Paper submission deadline: July 31, 2013
• Initial notification of acceptance (approximate): end of November 2013
• Publication in middle 2014

Andreas Hotho is new area editor for search and datamining

Andreas Hotho is now the area editor for search and datamining for the the Journal of Web Semantics, replacing Dr. Alon Halevy of Google, who has edited this topic for the past several years.

Dr. Hotho is a professor at the University of Würzburg. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Karlsruhe, where he worked from 1999 to 2004 at the Institute of Applied Informatics and Formal Description Methods in the areas of text, data, and web mining, semantic web and information retrieval.

He has published over 90 articles in journals and at conferences, co-edited several special issues and books, and co-chaired several workshops, including the Workshop on Recommender Systems and the Social Web in 2011 and 2012 held in conjunction with ACM RecSys and the ECML PKDD Discovery Challenge in 2008 and 2009. His research focuses on the combination of data mining, information retrieval and the semantic web.

CFP: Special issue on Life Science and e-Science

Call for Papers

Special issue of the Journal of Web Semantics
on Life Science and e-Science

Semantic technologies promoted by the W3C play an increasingly prominent role in how life sciences are performed. From ontologies that provide a common controlled vocabulary for describing data, to publication of data as Linked Open Data and its subsequent analysis. RDF and OWL are becoming the norm for interoperability of metadata and to some extent, data, between systems that can operate on the web. Increasingly large data sets are beginning to be tackled and made the subject of large data integration experiments. New models have been proposed that aim to capture trust and quality of data and experiments.

In the life sciences, semantic web tools and paradigms have found their way into many aspects of bio- and health informatics, with exciting applications appearing in areas ranging from plant genetics to drug discovery. Semantic technologies are becoming ever more capable of enhancing research practices in the life sciences, and thus a cornerstone for e-Science in this domain. It is also in here that many of the issues that result from putting theory to practice are encountered, making life sciences a prime driver for testing out, applying, and developing semantic technologies and e-Science.

To address the role that semantic technologies have come to play in enhancing the life sciences, and in turn acknowledging the role that this plays in maturing these technologies, we wish to publish a special issue of JWS containing novel research articles in this area. We welcome papers that demonstrate how semantic technologies enhance research, for instance by enabling intelligent search for new biological insights, or by enhancing digital research practices.
Topics of particular interest include the following.

• Web tools based on semantic technologies that change how life scientists work (Semantic Web, Agents, Databases, High Performance reasoning, Web standards, etc.)
• Advancements in Life Science enabled by Web Semantics
• New ways of publishing data and methods (scholarly communication), including mechanisms of dissemination, organization, understanding and use of workflows, web services, data, and knowledge.
• Life science information management and interoperability
• Knowledge discovery
• Paradigm shifts in the life sciences that result from the adoption of new standards and practices.

Important dates

• Paper submission deadline: July 31, 2013
• Initial notification of acceptance (approximate): November 2013
• Preprints online: December 2013
• Publication in early 2014

Guest editors

• Tim Clark, Massachusets General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, University of Manchester (twclark at partners.org)
• Marco Roos, Leiden University Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, NBIC (M.Roos1 at uva.nl)

Preprint: natural language interfaces for querying ontologies

A new paper is available on the Journal of Web Semantics preprint server.

Improving habitability of natural language interfaces for querying ontologies with feedback and clarifcation dialogues, Danica Damljanovic, Milan Agatonovic, Hamish Cunningham and Kalina Bontcheva, to appear, 2013.

Natural Language Interfaces (NLIs) are a viable, human-readable alternative to complex, formal query languages like SPARQL, which are typically used for accessing semantically structured data (e.g.. RDF and OWL repositories). However, in order to cope with natural language ambiguities, NLIs typically support a more restricted language. A major challenge when designing such restricted languages is habitability–how easily, naturally and effectively users can use the language to express themselves within the constraints imposed by the system. In this paper, we investigate two methods fo improving the habitability of a Natural Language Interface: feedback and clarifcation dialogues. We model feedback by showing the user how the system interprets the query,thus suggesting repair through query reformulation. Next, we investigate how clarifcation dialogues can be used to control the query interpretations generated by the system. To reduce the cognitive overhead, clarifcation dialogues are coupled with a learning mechanism. Both methods are shown to have a positive effect on the overall performance and habitability.

JWS volume 17 preprints available

Preprints from volume 17 of the Journal of Web Semantics are available at and include two research papers and two ontology papers.

• Understanding Why Users Tag: A Survey of Tagging Motivation Literature and Results from an Empirical Study by Markus Strohmaier, Christian Körner and Roman Kern
  
• Improving Semantic Web Services Discovery Using SPARQL-Based Repository Filtering by José María García, David Ruiz and Antonio Ruiz-Cortés
  
• The SSN Ontology of the W3C Semantic Sensor Network Incubator Group by Michael Compton et al.
  
• FaBiO and CiTO: ontologies for describing bibliographic resources and citations by Silvio Peroni and David Shotton

New JWS area editors and editorial board members

The Journal of Web Semantics is pleased to announce new area editors and editorial board members. Area editors oversee important subtopics in the journal's scope -- soliciting and encouraging submissions, managing the reviewing process and recommending decisions. Editorial board members provide advice on directions and policies for the Journal and serve as expert reviewers for submitted papers.

Joining the Journal as area editors are:

• Harith Alani (The Open University, UK) who will cover the Social Semantic Web
• Christian Bizer (Universität Mannheim) who will handle system papers
• Sebastian Rudolph (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) who will cover papers on reasoning
• Ansgar Scherp (Universität Mannheim) who will handle human-computer interaction (HCI) papers
• Robert Stevens (University of Manchester) who will manage eScience and life science papers

Stepping down as area editors are Peter Mika (Yahoo! Research), mc schraefel (University of Southampton) and M. Schroeder (Technische Universität Dresden). We thank them for their years of service to the Journal and semantic web research community as area editors.

Joining the editorial board are Lalana Kagal (MIT) and Bijan Parsia (University of Manchester). Guss Schreiber, who was one of the original members of the editorial board, is stepping down after ten years of service.

CFP: JWS special issue on Semantic Search

The Journal of Web Semantics seeks submissions for a special issue on Semantic Search to be edited by Roberto Navigli and Fabian M. Suchanek. Submissions are due by 1 July 2013.

Semantic technologies, such as expressive ontology and resource description languages, scalable repositories, reasoning engines and information extraction techniques, are now in a mature state so that they can give a higher level of semantics to Information Retrieval (IR) systems. This application of semantic technologies to IR tasks is typically referred to as Semantic Search. Challenges on this way include (i) identifying tasks and paradigms for semantic search systems, (ii) devising expressive disambiguation and annotation frameworks as well as scalable algorithms and infrastructures, (iii) investigating innovative query paradigms for semantic search systems, and (iv) applying machine learning, natural language processing and information extraction techniques in the context of semantic search.

This special issue will cover interdisciplinary topics between the Semantic Web and IR. These include, but are not limited to the following topics.

• Information retrieval tasks on the Semantic Web
• Incentives and interaction paradigms for resource annotation
• Interaction paradigms for semantic search
• Statistical and knowledge-rich techniques for semantic search
• Semantic technologies for query interpretation, refinement and routing
• Modeling expressive resource descriptions
• Natural language processing and information extraction for the acquisition of resource descriptions
• Lexical and knowledge resources for semantic search
• Scalable repositories and infrastructures for semantic search
• Crawling, storing and indexing of expressive resource descriptions
• Fusion of semantic search results on the Semantic Web
• Algorithms for matching expressive queries and resource descriptions
• Algorithms and procedures to deal with vagueness, incompleteness and inconsistencies in semantic search
• Evaluation methodologies for semantic search
• Standard datasets and benchmarks for semantic search
• Semantic Information Retrieval and semantic search engines
• Semantic search in or via linked data

We solicit contributions that address these challenges, as well as reports on novel applications with the potential to push semantic search forward

Submission guidelines

The Journal of Web Semantics solicits original scientific contributions of high quality. Following the overall mission of the journal, we emphasize the publication of papers that combine theories, methods and experiments from different subject areas in order to deliver innovative semantic methods and applications. The publication of large-scale experiments and their analysis is also encouraged to clearly illustrate scenarios and methods that introduce semantics into existing Web interfaces, contents and services.

Submission of your manuscript is welcome provided that it, or any translation of it, has not been copyrighted or published and is not being submitted for publication elsewhere. Upon acceptance of an article, the author(s) will be asked to transfer copyright of the article to the publisher. This transfer will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. Manuscripts should be prepared for publication in accordance with instructions given in the JWS guide for authors. The submission and review process will be carried out using Elsevier's Web-based EES system. Final decisions of accepted papers will be approved by an editor in chief.

Final layouted copies of accepted publications will appear in print and at the archival online server. Author preprints of the articles will be made freely accessible on the JWS preprint server.

Posted Schedule

• Call for papers: Dec 2012
• Submission deadline: 1st of July 2013
• Author notification: 1st of October 2013
• Submission deadline for revisions: 1st of January 2014
• Author notification: 1st of March 2014
• Submission deadline for camera-ready versions: 1st of April 2014

Contact Information

For any further questions regarding the special issue (appropriateness of your contribution, editorial issues, etc.), please feel free to contact the guest editors Roberto Navigli (LASTNAME@di.uniroma1.it) and Fabian M. Suchanek (LASTNAME@mpii.de).