CFP: MAGS Special Issue on "Agents, Web Services and Ontologies: Integrated Methodologies"

[Viviana Mascardi]

                    C A L L   F O R    P A P E R S

            International Journal Multiagent and Grid Systems
                              IOS Press

                           Special Issue on
      "Agents, Web Services and Ontologies: Integrated Methodologies"



Guest Editors
-------------

Matteo Baldoni (baldoni at di.unito.it)
Cristina Baroglio (baroglio at di.unito.it)
Viviana Mascardi (mascardi at disi.unige.it)


Aims of the special issue
-------------------------

The realisation of distributed, open, dynamic, and heterogeneous software
systems is a challenge that involves many facets, from formal theories to
software engineering and practical applications. Scientists in various
research areas are attacking this problem from different perspectives.

In particular, in the last years service-oriented software technologies,
and especially Web Services, have been gaining popularity, becoming a
leading paradigm in the development of IT solutions. The current web
service technology, however, does not yet supply valid methodologies for
developing cross-enterprise systems which require complex interactions
among the parties nor it supports the automatic retrieval and composition
of web services as well as desired. These issues, actually, demand for
semantic descriptions and for a formal representation of organizational
aspects that are at the heart of research in other fields, such as Agents
and Multi-Agent Systems and Ontologies, where the concepts of autonomy,
proactivity, heterogeneity, interaction, inference, flexibility, semantic
matching have a central role.

Each of the mentioned research fields has its specific competencies,
among them:

- MAS face the representation of distributed, open systems from an abstract
  point of view, supplying theories, methodologies, and tools for modelling
  systems of heterogeneous, interacting entities.
 
- Agent-Oriented Software Engineering studies how existing techniques
  can be adapted or extended in order to engineer this kind of complex
  distributed systems, and offers methodologies, notations, and techniques
  suitable for analysing, modelling, prototyping and finally implementing
  them following the "Multiagent System" metaphor.

- Web Services provide an already available and widely accepted
  infrastructure for supporting interoperable machine-to-machine 
interaction
  over a network, allowing heterogeneous software applications written in
  various programming languages and running on various platforms both to
  expose themselves as WSs, and to use other WSs.

- The need of sharing either a common, sophisticated conceptualisation of
  the application domain, or just a simple vocabulary, is more and more 
often
  addressed by means of Ontologies.  Ontologies are a key technology 
both in
  the Agent-Oriented Software Engineering field, where they are used to 
make
  the exchange of meaningful information among autonomous entities 
possible,
  and in the Web Services field, where they represent the means for moving
  from Web Services to Semantic Web Services.

This Special Issue attempts to collect and compare such diverse experiences
with the aim of fostering cross-fertilization. It is *not necessary* 
that the
submitted works tackle all of the mentioned aspects, but emphasis on inter-
connections between the fields will be appreciated.

This Special Issue is a follow-up of the MALLOW-AWESOME'007 workshop, 
held at
Durham, UK in September 2007 (http://awesome007.disi.unige.it), which has
provided a discussion forum for researchers working on Agents, Web 
Services,
and Ontologies. A selection of extended and revised works presented at the
workshop will be considered for publication, together with new works, which
have not been presented at MALLOW-AWESOME and that will be submitted by 
answering
to this call.


Topics
------

Topics of interest are all those concerned with integrated and/or 
cross-field
approaches for engineering Agents, Web Services, Ontologies. They include,
but are not limited to:

* Semantic Web Agents and Semantic Web Services
* Integrated Methodologies, Notations, Infrastructures, Languages
  for Agents, WSs, Ontologies
* Enhancement of communication among Agents/WSs by means of Ontologies
* Formal aspects for Agents, WSs and Ontologies
* Service-Oriented Multiagent systems
* Implementing agents with WS technologies
* Agent-inspired Declarative Approaches to WSs or SOA
* Exploiting AOSE for engineering WSs and Ontologies
* Orchestrations, choreographies, and Interaction Protocols: languages,
  theory and practice
* Formal Description of contracts and negotiation policies
* Tools for Semantic Web Services/Agents
* Applications of Semantic Web Services/Agents


Instructions for Authors
------------------------

Authors are requested to submit their manuscripts by email as PDF files to
the Special Issue guest editors (baldoni at di.unito.it, baroglio at di.unito.it,
mascardi at disi.unige.it).  Please, clearly state in the email message both
the journal name and the special issue title.

If you mean to contribute to the special issue, please, send an email,
containing *tentative title*, *authors*, *short abstract*, and *keywords*,
to the guest editors as soon as possible (and no later than January, 15th,
2008).

Manuscripts must be formatted according to the guidelines that can be
retrieved through the link http://www.iospress.nl/html/15741702.php
(accessible also through the MALLOW-AWESOME'007 workshop web page:
http://awesome007.disi.unige.it/specialissue.html).

Notice that paper submission is to be done by email to the guest editors 
and
*not* by means of the IOS Press submission system, which can be used 
only for
papers that are not to be included in a special issue.

Important dates
---------------

* Deadline for abstracts: January, 15th, 2008.
* Deadline for submission: February, 20th, 2008
* Deadline for review: March, 24th, 2008