Tuesday, November 11, 2008

JWS blog moved

We've moved the Journal of Web Semantics blog from a self-hosted Wordpress installation to Google-hosted blogger. We've moved the old posts (manually!) and the recommended public feed remains the same: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ jwsBlog.
Our move was motivated by a desire to make it easier for more people to contribute to the blog, a need to streamline the maintenance of the JWS infrastructure, and a goal to make the tools we use independent of the institutions of the current editors-in-chief.

CfP: Special issue of the JWS on The Web of Data

Axel Polleres and David Huynh are editing a special issue of the Journal of Web Semantics on “The Web of Data” that will appear in the Summer 2009.
As the core of the Semantic Web matures, we see parallel trends such as microformats, RDFa, and Linked Data evolve with it, all of which complementing each other in what we may well call a machine-readable Web. Yet, scalable techniques to deal with this Web of Data in its entirety, i.e. using the "Web as the data base", as the Semantic Web was once envisioned, still misses some important puzzle pieces. Scalability here does not only include the ability to handle amounts of data at Web scale in terms of actual data processing, but also human-scalable and user-friendly tools that open the Web of Data to the current Web user.
This special issue shall encompass the recent trends of the "traditional" Web and the Semantic Web converging into the Web of Data.
Topics include (but are not limited to):
  • Querying the Web of Data
  • Searching and Browsing the Web of Data
  • Reasoning for the Web of Data
  • Using models of provenance and trust
  • Probabilistic models for data integration
  • Strategies for dealing with the natural inconsistencies on the Web
  • Populating the Web of Data (information retrieval, linked data, automatic annotation, deep Web crawling, etc.)
  • Principles and Structure of the Web of Data
  • Data Models for the Web - RDF & its "alternatives" (GRDDL, RDFa, microformats,etc.)
  • Personal/personalized Web of Data (particularly, consumer-oriented products)
  • Tools & Mash-ups
  • Web of Data vs. Web 2.0
  • Web of Data and Social Networks
  • The Web of Data as a New Medium
  • Practical Stepping Stones & Strategies Towards the Web of Data
Particularly, for the first three items we solicit contributions which for instance (i) push the boundaries of scale towards Web size, (ii) suggest novel ranking techniques for the Web of data, or (iii) deal with the evolutionary and structural characteristics of the Web of Data. We also solicit reports on novel applications using the Web of Data, as well as strategic and practical contributions with the potential to drive the idea of the Web of Data 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.

About the Journal of Web Semantics

The Journal of Web Semantics is published by Elsevier since 2003. It is an interdisciplinary journal based on research and applications of various subject areas that contribute to the development of a knowledge-intensive and intelligent service Web. These areas include: knowledge technologies, ontology, agents, databases and the semantic grid, obviously disciplines like information retrieval, language technology, human-computer interaction and knowledge discovery are of major relevance as well. All aspects of the Semantic Web development are covered. Editors-in-Chief: Tim Finin, Riichiro Mizoguchi, Steffen Staab For all editors information, see http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaleditorialboard.cws_home/671322/editorialboard The Journal of Web Semantics offers to its authors and readers:
  • Free availability of papers on the Web at http://www.semanticwebjournal.org/
  • Professional support with publishing by Elsevier staff
  • Indexed by Thomson-Reuters web of science
  • Impact factor 3.41: the third highest out of 92 titles in Thomson-Reuters' category "Computer Science, Information Systems"

Important Dates

We aim at an efficient publication cycle in order to guarantee up-to-dateness of the published results. We will review papers on a rolling basis as they are submitted and explicitly encourage submissions well before the final deadline.
Submission deadline:21 January 2009
Reviews due:18 March 2009
Notification:30 March 2009
Final version submitted:27 April 2009
Publication:July 2009

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:

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

JWS policy on special issues

The Journal of Web Semantics is happy to receive proposals for special issues devoted to a specific topic that is within it's scope. Successful proposals will focus on research or application areas of emerging significance or for which innovative and novel work is being done. The journal is generally not interested in mounting special issues primarily based on papers that have been published in the proceedings of a conference or workshop. A special issue (SI) proposal should include the following information.
  • One or more people who will serve as the special-issue editors and work with the JWS editors in chief and/or an area editor to produce the issue. A short biosketch should be submitted for each. If there are more than one SI editor, please select one to be the lead point of contact.
  • A concise description of the SI topic along with a justification of why a special issue is appropriate at this time.
  • A description of the research communities that the SI will draw from or be of interest to.
  • Any papers or authors that the SI editors intend to invite.
  • Any constraints or preferences for publication date or number of pages for the SI.
The actual publication date and number of pages for accepted proposals will be decided by the editors in chief in consultation with the SI editors and is subject to the constraints imposed by the publisher. All special issues must have an open call for submissions to which member of the research community can respond by submitting papers. The SI editors are free, of course, to invite submissions. The call will be available on the JWS web site but the SI editors will be expected to advertise the call is appropriate venues. All papers, whether invited or submitted, will undergo the same thorough review process used for regular papers submitted to the journal. This normally involves seeking reviews from three qualified reviewers. The SI editors will be responsible for recruiting reviewers and ensuring that their reviews are done in a timely manner and of high quality. The submission and review process must be carried out using Elsevier's Web-based EES system. This includes accepting initial submissions, recruiting and assigning reviewers, entering reviews, issuing decisions, submitting revised version and providing the final version of accepted papers. Final decisions of accepted papers must be approved by an editor in chief.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

JWS receives high impact factor from Thomson Reuters

During the past year, the Journal of Web Semantics was added to the list of journals indexed by Thomson Reuters. Their most recent Journal Citation Report (2007) gives the JWS an impact factor of 3.41, which is the third highest out of the 92 titles in its category -- Computer Science, Information Systems. Thomson Reuter's journal impact factor is a measure of the frequency with which the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular year. The 2007 impact factor is computed as the citations received in 2007 to all articles published in 2006 and 2005, divided by the number of "source items" published in 2006 and 2005.