Tuesday, November 11, 2008

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: